Workers Vanguard No 200 - 7 April 1978

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WfJRIlERI ,,1N(JU,1R' 25¢
No. 200
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7 April 1978
CP Demands Witchhunt of Far Left

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Rastelli/Epoca
occurs elsewhere), abandon the duty of
revolutionists to defend those who
attack the symbols or representatives of
the capitalist class.
But the BR's kidnapping of Moro
was indeed extraordinarily stupid.
Rather than accomplish its stated
intention to "mobilize the most vast and
unified armed initiative for the further
growth of class war for communism"
(BR communique, quoted in Corrierre
della Sera, 19 March), their action
succeeded only in mobilizing the most
vast and unified outpouring of support
for the bourgeois state and its repressive
apparatus. The leading contender for
Italian presidency next December,
Moro is not a widely hated figure.
Unlike many of his Christian Democrat-
ic cohorts, he was not a former fascist.
He is best known as the architect of the
continued on page 9
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Rome cops mob scene of Moro kidnapping March 16.
kidnappings in Italy, mostly for had been threatening for months to call
ransom.) a general strike against the govern-
Yet the most outspoken voice clamor- ment's austerity policies, but always
ing for "law and order" is none other kept postponing it.) Hundreds of
tha!1 the Communist Party (PCI), which thousands throughout Italy attended
for the first time in 30 years has now mass demonstrations as the red banners
formally joined the government majori- of the PCI intermingled with the white
ty in parliament. Offering themselves up flags of the Christian Democracy (DC)
as the most fervent protector of the for the first time in decades. Even
bourgeois order, the PCI has demanded northern factories which had been
expansion of the state secret police and considered strongholds of "far left"
more vigorous suppression of "political syndicalists joined in the general strike.
criminality." The pro-Socialist news Prostrate before this massive outcry
magazine L' Espresso (2 April) entitled for capitalist law and order, most of the
its lead editorial, "From now on the duel Italian far left has either retreated into
is between the BR and the PCI. And the timid neutrality or echoed the PeI's
PCI cannot afford to lose." charges that the BR action was a rightist
Immediately following news of provocation (or the work of unnamed
Moro's abduction, the unitary labor foreign intelligence agencies). When
federation (CGIL-CISL-UIL) issued a bourgeois hysteria wins popular sup-
call for a general strike against terror- port these inveterate tailists, who cheer
ism. (This was ironic since the unions on urban guerrilla warfare (so long as it
50,000 Troops Search
Rome
APRIL 4-The March 16 kidnapping
of former Italian premier Aldo Moro on
the streets of Rome amidst a hail
of machine-gun bullets was not just
another terrorist action in a countrv
where assassinations and abductions
have become commonplace. The most
dramatic act of individual terrorism in
post-war Europe, this elaborate opera-
tion carried out by the anarcho-Maoist
"Red Brigades" (BR) with military-like
efficiency was widely contrasted to the
notorious incompetence of the Italian
state machinery. But although it further
discredited the regime, in its wake the
BR attack has evoked an unaccustomed
delirium of "national unity" against
terrorism which is being translated into
decrees granting police the most sweep-
ing powers of repression since the fall of
Mussolini.
Rome was put under virtual military
occupation qS over 50,000 police and
troops blocked all roads and conducted
a house-to-house dragnet looking for
Moro. Yet the search for Italy's leading
bourgeois politician continues to no
avail. Taunting the government, Moro's
abductors subsequently dropped off
two of the getaway cars near the scene of
the kidnapping. Ruling Christian Dem-
ocrats have been thrown into a panic
at the prospect that the five-time
premier may be "induced to speak in a
manner that could be disagreeable and
dangerous in certain circumstances"
(letter from Moro, quoted in New York
Times, 30 March) and air the past 30
years of governmental dirty laundry.
In another slap in the face against the
Italian state. Moro's letter suggested an
intervention by the Vatican. A spokes-
man for the pope responded that this
was possible. Meanwhile the Roman
underworld has joined the manhunt in
order to hurry up a return to normality;
the uproar and police mobilization in
the wake of the Moro kidnapping was
"bad for business." And when the "anti-
terrorist" laws were stiffened. this too
was done al/'italiana: a distinction will
henceforth be made between common
kidnappings for purposes of extortion
and the more threatening political
kidnappings. (Last year there were 78
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. The Rebirth of British Trotskyism••• page 4 .
- - . ~ ...".._.-
Shah's Troop.s Gun Down Hundreds
Anti-Shah Protests Erupt in Iran
WV Photo
"Islamic Marxist" anti-Shah protesters in Washington, November 15.
The largest political protests seen in
Iran in 15 years continue to shake the
barbaric dictatorship of Reza Shah
Pahlavi, that self-appointed and CIA-
invested "King of Kings." Late in
February;thousands took to the streets
of the country's second largest city,
Tabriz, in the northern province of
Azerbaijan, to express their hatred of
the bloody regime. Now, following the
traditional Muslim 40-day mourning
period for the victims of the Shah's
repression at Tabriz, strikes and demon-
strations have erupted in at least a dozen
cities.
Banks and offices of the government's
Restakhiz Party were singled out for
attacks in several towns and the north-
eastern city of Isfahan. By March 31 five
banks in Teheran had been firebombed,
and the police had been heavily rein-
forced in an attempt to crush the
rebellion. Although dozens of anti-Shah
leafletters have been gunned down or
arrested, as of April 2 the demonstra-
tions were continuing.
Meanwhile at Qasr, Iran's largest
prison, political prisoners staged a
hunger strike in mid-March demanding
retrial before civilian courts rather than
military tribunals, an end to overcrowd-
ing and poor food, and permission for
family visits. Riot police have repeated-
ly clashed outside Qasr with relatives of
prisoners demanding such visitation
rights.
On February 19 the Tabriz market
was shut down as a gesture of solidarity
with student protests which had been
called at the end of a 4O-day period
of mourning for the hundreds of dem-
onstrators who had been massacred by
the Iranian military in the city of
Qom on January 9. Tabriz exploded
when the Shah's bloodthirsty storm-
troopers attacked unarmed protesters
who had peacefully gathered at a
mosque.
Chanting throngs surged through the
streets of the Azerbaijani capital,
hurling rocks and even Molotov cock-
tails at government buildings, banks,
hotels and movie houses. Before the end
of the day riotous crowds reportedly
had taken control of the streets between
the university and the airport, a distance
of seven- miles.
Continuing the following day, the
Tabriz protests targeted symbols of the
despised Pahlavi autocracy. Angry
mobs stormed and torched the local
headquarters of the so-called "National
Resurgence" (Restakhiz) Party estab-
lished by the Shah in 1974 to be Iran's
only legal political party. Also de-
stroyed were official emblems, which
had been erected all over Iran by the
Shah in 1971 commemorating the
supposed 2,5ooth anniversary of the
Persian empire. At that time 10,000
suspected opponents of the regime were
rounded up to ensure that no "disturb-
ances" mar the festivities. But among
the masses burning memories still linger
of how the Shah regaled presidents,
princes and sheiks with caviar-stuffed
quail eggs in the ruins of ancient
Persepolis while famine raged in several
provinces, forcing the peasants to eat
straw and in some instances even to sell
their children for a pittance to buy some
scraps of food.
During the second day of the protests
the Shah mobilized armored cars and
units of machine gun wielding soldiers
to brutally restore "law and order."
While official sources claim "only" nine
killed, other reports of how over a
hundred were gunned down and many
2
1 \
more wounded by the vicious Iranian
military are undoubtedly far closer to
the real truth. Similarly, the number
arrested in Tabriz is certainly much
greater than the 700 announced by
Teheran. Official claims that only one or
two thousand "terrorists" languish in
the Shah's dungeons have been thor-
oughly exposed even by bourgeois civil-
libertarian organizations such as Am-
nesty international. which puts the
number of victims of the Shah's white
terror as high as 100,000.
"Crush the Foreign
Worshippers!"
In the past the Shah has quite
brazenly justified his reign of terror as
simply necessary security measures
aimed only at isolated "Communist
terrorists." On numerous occasions the
Shah has countered charges of massive
"human rights violations" with the
claim that his regime has never been
more stable and rests on a wide base of
popular support. To dramatize his false
claim the Shah even made the pretense
last summer of beginning to relax the
repression in Iran, notably by permit-
ting pOlitical prisoners held in SAVAK
torture chambers to be tried before
civilian courts rather than before star-
chamber military tribunals as in the
past.
But over the last several months the
Shah has had to contend with broader
political protests and growing civil
disorder that even "His Majesty" dare
not simply dismiss as isolated terrorist
actions by clandestine urban guerrilla
groups in their death throes. Last
November student demonstrations
erupted in the heart of the capital city of
Teheran. To suppress these protests the
Shah felt compelled to send against the
unarmed students not only his sadistic
cops but also plainclothes SAVAK
thugs-who could be portrayed as
"outraged bystanders" rushing into the
fray to give their beloved Shah a helping
hand in restoring order on the campus.
Despite massive repression and the
formidable mobilization of the armed
forces in Teheran, several weeks later
demonstrations in the capital greeted
U.S. President Carter when he arrived
for his New Year's palaver with the
Shah. In response, the Shah opened the
third congress of his puppet Restakhiz
Party with the shrill call for "complete
awareness and alertness against anti-
national plots" (quoted in Guardian
[London], 5 January 1978). The fren-
zied delegates responded with the cry,
"Crush the foreign worshippers!"
What worries the Shah is that his
active political opposition has been
spreading beyond the bounds of the
campuses in Iran. At Tabriz, as was also
the case at Qom in early January,
student radicals were joined by oppo-
nents of the Shah from among the
reactionary ulema-the scholars, teach-
ers and jurists who compose the Islamic
religious hierarchy. It was accusations
against the exiled religious leader
Ayatollah Khomeini made by the semi-
official Teheran paper Ettela'at that
touched off the Qom demonstrations;
among the more prominent victims of
the ensuing repression were five anti-
Shah religious leaders who were exiled
to remote cities in particularly arid
wastelands of the country.
The ulema has been left as the sole
focus for anti-Shah and anti-American
sentiment among the iranian masses by
the decimation of the pro-Moscow
Tudeh party after 1953, and the repres-
sion of the bourgeois nationalists of
Mossadegh's National Front. While the
remnants of the National Front are
barely tolerated as the "Union of
National Front Forces," the Tudeh
party has been reduced to a clandestine
or exile existence.
The Spectre of '63
While the Shah was able to suppress
the Qom protests through brute military
force, the Tabriz "riots" represented a
far more serious threat to the Peacock
Throne. A very similar uprising in 1963
brought the Pahlavi monarchy to the
brink of disaster.
As seems to have been the case in
Tabriz, at that time as well the ulema
played a prominent role in leading mass
opposition to the Shah. Nor does the
parallel end there. As at Qom in early
January, so in 1963 the protests were
sparked when the government accused
the religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini
of opposing land reforms dictated by the
Shah's "White Revolution." When
Khomeini was arrested on charges of
having distributed leaflets opposing
land reform, mass protests erupted in
Teheran and fighting broke out after
soldiers were sent against huge crowds
who were chanting, "Down with the
Shah!" Several attempts were made to
seize the Teheran radio station, while
clashes also occurred in the cities of
Shiraz, Isfahan and Qom, and several
nomadic tribes rose in revolt.
So critical was the situation that the
Shah's military advisers thought that
the troops in Teheran would probably
mutiny if ordered to fire on the crowds
in the streets for a second day. Fresh
military units had to be mobilized in
order to drown the rebellion in blood.
As many as 15,000 people were repor-
tedly killed in the 1963 uprising.
Coming in the wake of the Qom
protests, the recent "riot" in Tabriz, a
key city containing a significant concen-
tration of the small but combative
Iranian proletariat, graphically demon-
strated the fragility of the Iranian
autocratic regime. It was quite signifi-
cant that according to BBC radio
reports U.S. naval units in the Indian
Ocean were put on alert for several days
after the outbreak in Tabriz. U.S.
imperialism wanted to be prepared for a
possible intervention in the event that
Iranian troops might prove unreliable in
suppressing the Tabriz revolt before the
unrest spread to Teheran. Even though
the Iranian military machine has al-
ready become enormous (over the last
five years alone the Shah has purchased
from the U.S. some $18 billion in
weapons and plans to buy another ten
Boeing radar aircraft, 140 F-16 fighters
and 250 F-IS's), the U.S. still maintains
at least 35,000 U.S. military personnel in
Iran (projected to rise to 60,000 by
1980). Not long ago Carter issued a
directive to expand "U.S. strategic
priorities to include defending the
WORKERS VANGUARD
il
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Publishing Co.
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Enzo Lucer!
Veiled woman on Teheran street.
nationalists can carry out occasional
very partial reforms only through
establishing bonapartist regimes (usual-
ly military dictatorships) which, as the
fall of Mossadegh demonstrated once
again, cannot break the back of
domestic reaction or sever the link of
imperialist domination.
There can be no conciliation between
communism and the Koran. The tradi-
tional petty bourgeoisie, the constituen-
cy of the ulema, is fettered by its
medieval prejudices and is declining in
economic importance. Like the new
middle class of professionals, engineers,
etc., and the peasantry-dispersed over
the country, impoverished, illiterate and
internally divided-the artisans and
shopkeepers of the bazaar can play no
independent political role. Dissolving
the proletariat into the petty-bourgeois
masses in the name of the "people" and a
classless "democratic" revolution,
would mean abandoning the leadership
of both proletariat and petty bourgeoi-
sie to the Iranian bourgeoisie. But in the
imperialist epoch the democratic tasks
of agrarian revolution, freeing Iran's
oppressed nationalities and breaking
imperialist domination, will be carried
out, not with but against the Iranian
bourgeoisie, through establishing a
proletarian dictatorship.
Iran's 3 million-strong working class,
concentrated in large masses in the
factories and industrial centers, con-
fronts the Pahlevi dictatorship in the
everyday struggles for its most basic
needs. A Leninist, Trotskyist party,
rooted in this restive proletariat, would
Workers Vanguard
in BOUND VOLUMES
Volume 7 Includes:
• WV nos. 1-34
• Workers Action nos. 7-10
• SUbject index
act as the "tribune of the people,"
championing the needs of oppressed
non-proletarian strata, but only on the
basis of the independent political
organization of the proletariat. Thus,
revolutionary Marxists raise a program
that connects urgent democratic de-
mands with a struggle for proletarian
state power:
Down with the Shah!Smash SAVAK!
For full trade-union rights! Full legal
equality for women!
For the right ofself-determinationfor
national minorities!
For a constituent assembly based on
universal suffrage!
Land to the tiller!
For a workers and peasants
government!
Limited Edition now available:
,.... _ I
USSR
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JAE {Gult ot Oman

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IRAN
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endowments). Moreover, even the
"progressive" ayatollahs who declared
in 1963 that they were not opposed to
land reform were unanimous in denoun-
cing the Shah for granting women the
right to vote! Even today, during the
Tabriz "riots" anti-Shah demonstrators
reportedly assaulted women on the
streets who were wearing Western-style
apparel instead of the body-length, all-
enshrouding veil.
No wonder the Shah approaches the
religious opposition with the classic
carrot-and-stick approach. In the recent
period the Shah has given greater
freedom of expression to the ulema
while cracking down on the ostensibly
socialist left. At the same time the Shah
has made numerous gestures toward the
Muslim religious establishment and
Islamic prejudices among the popula-
tion. Newspapers have prominently
featured photos of the Shah leading the
Ashura morning ceremony in the main
mosque in Teheran, and the regime has
announced that a new Islamic university
will be constructed at Mashad,
Despite their left phrasemongering,
the so-called "Islamic Marxists," even
those who support the "Marxist-
Leninist" OMPI, capitulate to religious
obscurantism and feudal-derived social
codes supported by the extreme fanatics
among the ulema. None of the "Islamic
Marxists" in Iran are willing to confront
the woman question head on, while
most simply turn a deaf ear to the
reactionary ravings of the ayatollahs
who think that the Shah's greatest sin
was giving women the vote.
For the "Islamic Marxists" (as well as
the pro-Moscow Tudeh party. the
Maoists and the "anti-revisionist" urban
guerrillas), the reactionary Muslim
opponents of the Shah are necessary
allies in the struggle for a "two-stage
revolution" in Iran: first a "democratic"
revolution to bring to power a "progres-
sive" nationalist and only after a period
of "progressive" capitalism a subse-
quent socialist revolution.
Buthisfory has written in the blood of
the workers and poor peasants the
lesson that reliance upon the so-called
national (or "anti-imperialist") bour-
geoisie and subordination of the class
interests of the toilers for the sake of
maintaining an alliance with radical
religious fanatics will only ensure that
the revolution never even completes its
first "stage," Kemal Atattirk was a far
more "progressive" nationalist than
Mossadegh or the likes of Ayatollah
Khomeini; at least Atattirk waged a
military struggle against the Kaliphate
and British imperialism and imposed a
series of real bourgeois-democratic
reforms, including abolishing most of
the Muslim social code holding women
in bondage. But Kemal Atattirk did so
not in alliance with the Turkish working
class but over the corpse of the Commu-
nist Party. Such radical bourgeois
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Saudi Arabia
Meanwhile, the rural bourgeoisie has
been economically strengthened by the
land "reform" scheme. Compensation
for lands sold under the "reform" is
given in the form of shares in state-
owned enterprises rather than monetary
payments, thereby serving to fuse the
traditional landowning class with indus-
trial capital under state sponsorship.
Even more spurious are the claims of
the regime to have improved the status
of women in Islamic Iran. Much ado has
been made about how the hideously
oppressive Muslim family laws have
been reformed and how women have
been given the franchise.
In reality, however, the bulk of the
family laws has been left intact under
the "White Revolution." As before,
Muslim women are still forbidden to
marry non-Muslim men. Regardless of
her age, no woman may marry without
the consent of her parents; no woman
may leave the country without the
consent of her father or husband; no
woman may appear as a witness in a
divorce case; and no woman may take a
job which her husband considers to be
"injurious" to the "dignity" of the
family. And, according to the infamous
code 179, if a man finds his wife in bed
with another man and murders one or
both of them, he is acquitted ([ISA]
Resistance, June 1973).
While women have been given the
right to vote, in practice their ballots
often are collected in separate boxes and
then simply discarded. Moreover, if the
Shah has given women the right to vote,
he has also given them one-and only
one-legal party to vote for!
Marx and Muhammad?
Contrary to the Shah's propaganda,
the Islamic opposition to the regime is
not monolithic. It encompasses every-
thing from fanatically anti-communist
ulemas to self-described "Islamic Marx-
ists" who continue to support the
underground guerrilla group known as
the Organization of Mojahedin [Com-
batants] of the People of Iran (OMPI),
which now claims to be "Marxist-
Leninist."
However, while his claims to have
promoted social equality and economic
amelioration for the broad masses of
Iran are phony to the core, the Shah
nevertheless is not simply fabricating
the charges that among the religious
opposition are many who oppose re-
forms (regardless of whether or not the
Shah has actually implemented them)
which go against their traditionalist
anti-Western, reactionary religious
prejudices.
Aside from whether Ayatollah Kho-
meini opposed land reforms in 1963 or
later from exile (a disputed question), at
least some of the ulema have been
known to have come out against any
state confiscation of the waqf(religious
7 April 1978 No. 200
share of the crop. Under the Shah's land
"reform" only the nasaqdars were
eligible to purchase land. Thus by 1967,
after five years of the "White Revolu-
tion," only 4 percent of the peasantry-
mainly usurers and kulaks-had actual-
ly received ownership of any land, while
the vast majority of the Iranian peasan-
try have become either rent-paying
tenants (as opposed to sharecroppers)
or else pauperized agricultural laborers
forced by famines and destitution to
trek into the squalid urban shantytowns
in search of some subsistence livelihood.
Marxist Working-Class Weekly
of the Spartacist League of the U.S.
Published weekly, except bi-weekly in August
and December, by the Spartacist Publishing
Co. 260 West Broadway, New York, NY 10013.
Telephone: 966-6841 (Editorial), 925-5665
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Opinions expressed in signed articles or
letters do not necessarily express the editorial
viewpoint.
Persian Gulf" with "the use of possible
ground forces, supported by air and
naval units in the Persian Gulf or the
Middle East" (Chicago Sun Times, II
September 1977).
What "White Revolution"?
UPJ
Carter's "Human Rights" means
Butcher Shah.
WORKERS
',HOI/IRIJ
Unable to persist in the claim that the
. Qom and Tabriz protests were simply
the work of "terrorists," the Shah has
taken to pointing his bejeweled accusing
finger at an allegedly unholy alliance of
ultra-traditionalist Muslim fanatics and
leftists. According to Teheren, the
Tabriz "riots" were instigated by"lslam-
ic Marxists" and feudalist ulemas, who
for religious reasons were opposed to
the so-called "reforms" which the Shah
has introduced to improve the status of
women and the position of the mass of
impoverished peasantry.
This is a charge which has been used
for some time by the Shah. Ever.since
the pA-inspired coup which installed
him on the throne in 1953, the Shah has
made demagogic use of opposition to
his "White Revolution" from within the
reactionary ulema. But, insofar as the
so-called "White Revolution" was more
than purely cosmetic, it was designed to
stave off a convulsive peasant rebellion
by creating a small stratum of prosper-
ous small landowners to act as a buffer.
As such, the Shah's agrarian reform
closely resembled the Stolypin reforms
imposed in tsarist Russia after the 1905
Revolution.
For the mass of rural toilers the
"White Revolution" has brought abso-
lutely nothing. Under the traditional
Iranian landholding system the peasant-
ry was divided into the
(landless) and the nasaqdars, who had
the right to work a plot of land in
exchange for yielding to the landlord a
7 APRIL 1978 3
organisation in deep trouble, its hap-
hazard "international work" come to
naught and its domestic prospects
cloudy at best. As the TF stated in its
founding document:
"The WSL is in chaos. It has no clear
idea of its tasks or direction....
"This situation has a political origin-
to put it bluntly the movement as yet
lacks any programmatic basis for
existence as a distinct political tenden-
cy. Every political tendency from
Trotskyism to reformism is represented
on the NC [National Committee] and
among the membership."
··"In Defence of the
Revolutionary Programme"
(lNDORP). [WSL] Pre-
Conference Discussion
Bulletin No.8. February 1978
Yet only three years ago Healy's
expulsion of the Thornett grouping
from his Workers Revolutionary Party
(WRP) made a big splash among
ostensible Trotskyists throughout the
world. Thornetl's orthodox-sounding
defence of the Transitional Programme,
his well-publicised industrial militancy
and opposition to Healy's sectarian
practices promised to be an attractive
combination. What brought about his
demise'?
In the mid-1960's a large part of the
leadership of the shop stewards commit-
tee at the Cowley assembly plant (then
Morris Motors), including Alan Thor-
nett who had been a Communist Party
trade unionist, were personally recruit-
ed by Gerry Healy to the Socialist
Labour League (SLL-predecessor of
the WRP). "The Cowley Fraction" was
Healy's pride and joy and the major
vehicle for the expression of his de-
formed brand of Trotskyism in the
labour movement. But the first time
Thornett crossed his godfather, Healy
responded with vicious Mafia tactics,
including physical intimidation.
The Thornett group, including the
Cowley fraction was summarily ex-
pelled in December 1974 and a few
months later became the core of the
Workers Socialist League. The iSt
assessed the split tentatively at the time:
"At prtsent the WSL is most clearly
defined negatively.... While its future
programmatic course is not definitely
predictable, the WSL's failure to devel-
op the internal struggle against Healy
much bevond the democracv issue. and
its rejection of Healyite "uitra-Ieftism'
while maintaining some of the most
rightist-revisionist aspects of the SLLj
WRP. would secm todefine the WSL as
a split to the right from a badly
deformed and characteristicallv
English-centered version of fake
·Trotsk\ism· ...
. "After Healv. What'! WSL
Adrift ... II 'f' :\0. 69, 2J Ma\
1975 '
WORKERS VANGUARD
e
Ir
SpB Photo
Prior to the split of the TrotSkyist
Faction the WSL was already an
The WSl from Womb to...
Moreover, Thornett's response to the
challenge presented by the Trotskyist
Faction was positively pathetic, both
before and after the split. Perhaps
sensing that he is at his weakest debating
politics, Thornett simply waved his
Cowley credentials as a talisman to
ward off all attacks. In his hour-and-a-
half opening remarks to the WSL
conference he attended only briefly to
the programmatic issues which were
about to rip 20 percent of the partici-
pants away from him. His allegation
that the TF members were only interest-
ed in "exciting politics" was hardly an
indictment in view of the WSL's
apolitical glorification of the "daily
grind." And the failure of the majority
to present any political perspective
certainly contributed to the fact that a
relatively large number of the TF
supporters were younger rank-and-
filers. Rarely has a centrist leadership
presided 0\'Cr the coming apart of its
organisation so meekly.
e e
rl IS
e
IS 5
e
British terrain, has certainly given no
comfort to Pennington et al. It indicates
that there are those on the British "far
left" who have had enough of chasing
after whatever is popular and want to
get on with the business of constructing
a democratic-centralist, authentically
Trotskyist International.
As for the workerist WSL, in its main
reply to the TF documents the Thornett
group initially referred to the opposi-
tionists as "a small part of our move-
ment." From the tone of their subse-
quent public comments it is evident that
they were surprised that nearly two
dozen members took the step of walking
out of the Workers Socialist League.
The WSL will not easily recover from
the loss of two National Committee
members. three members of the Social-
ist Press editorial board, three out of
four members of its Irish Commission,
and several regional and local organis-
ers. With the loss of one fifth of its active
membership. the WSL reverts back to
its original regional limitations-the
celebrated car fraction at British Ley-
land's Cowley plant in Oxford, the
London grouping and a handful of
shaky members in Yorkshire.
Founding Conference of the Spartacist League/Britain,
o
One Fifth of WSL
Walks Out, Fuses with iSt
LONDON- When 24 supporters of the
Trotskyist Faction (TF) walked out of
the Workers Socialist League (WSL) at
the WSL's 18-19 February second
annual conference they left declaring
their opposition to the central leader-
ship's "Pabloite attachment to the
Labour Party, their capitulationist
attitude to nationalism, and in particu-
lar Irish nationalism, their all-pervading
economism and mmimalism and their
parochialism" ("Statement of the Trot-
skyist Faction," WV No. 194. 24
February). Its aim. said the TF. was to
struggle for a British section of a
recreated Fourth International. The
first step toward this goal was the rapid
merger of forces with the London
Spartacist Group (LSG), at a confer-
ence over the 4-5 March weekend. to
form the Spartacist League / Britain
(SL/B) as a sympathising organisation
of the international Spartacist tendency
(iSt).
This fusion is one of the largest and
most important in the IS-year history of
the Spartacist tendency. The new
organisation already has close on 50
members and a presence both in
London and the Midlands. By its
comprehensive Leninist programme
and clear internationalist perspectives
the SL/B is exercising a strong attrac-
tion on remaining dissident elements
inside the WSL. The same will soon
prove true as well toward the numerous
small centrist organisations, which will
find in the Spartacist League'a solidly
programmatically based unity-in
striking contrast to the short-lived,
politically promiscuous unnatural cou-
plings which pass for fusions in the
highly fragmented British Trotskyoid
milieu.
The factional struggle in the WSL and
the fusion with the TF also vindicate in a
powerful manner the iSt's pOlicy of
revolutionary regroupment. Recognis-
ing that many valuable militants are
presently to be found in various pseudo-
revolutionary organisations, we have
fought to regroup the best of these
potential cadres for the nucleus of an
international vanguard party. It was
essentially a process of splits and
fusions. both in the U.S. and interna-
tionally, that enabled the Spartacist
League / U.S. to break out of the
national isolation imposed by our
expulsion from Gerry Healy's 1966
International Committee (IC) confer-
ence. But for the WSL leadership
around Alan Thornett any polemical
combat within the left is "petty-
bourgeois"; consequently the WSL has
been unable to develop any coherent
perspective for international work at all.
The goal of our regroupment policy
has always been to decisively split the
cadre of centrist organisations, in the
first instance the Pabloist pretenders to
Trotskyism who are the principal
obstacle to reforging the Fourth Inter-
national. This is exactly what has
happened in the WSL. Just over four
years ago Workers Vanguard sent a
reporter to cover the British miners
strike. At that time the Spartacist
tendency had just made its first isolated
recruits in Europe. Only at the end of
1975 were we able to establish a
Spartacist group in London, and it took
nearly two years of dogged propagan-
distic activity to achieve the break-
through represented by the fusion with
the Trotskyist Faction. But today
sections of the iSt outside the U.S. make
up over one-third of the total member-
ship of the tendency internationally.
Bob Pennington, a leader of the
International Marxist Group (IMG-
British affiliate of the so-called United
Secretariat of the Fourth International
[USee]), remarked last autumn that
those who proclaim themselves Trot-
skyists will have to choose between two
"mainstreams," the USee and the iSt. By
this he undoubtedly meant to suggest
that the "re-united" USee would be
"where the action is." But the WSL split
and subsequent formation of the SL/B,
establishing the iSt as a direct organisa-
tional competitor with the USee on the
4
Workers leaving British Leyland's Cowley plant.
7 APRIL 1978
The CDLM and the Lib-Lab
Coalition
However, the real catalyst for the
amorphous left-wing opposition which
was to result in the Trotskyist Faction
was the WSL's intervention in the
British class struggle. A challenge to the
Thornett leadership took shape around
objections to the WSL-created Cam-
paign for Democracy in the Labour
Movement (CDLM) and to its failure to
place the government question at the
centre of WSL trade-union work. This
faIlure was particularly glaring after the
formation of the Labour Party's parlia-
mentary coalition with the Liberals in
March 1977.
In response to the reappearance of
this British version of the popular front
for the first time since World War II, the
international Spartacist tendency called
continued on page 6
5
the Ru/;sian question (Workers Poweris
state capitalist), the Labour Party and
Ireland. The Workers Fight/Workers
Power marriage of convenience came
apart shortly before its first anniversary,
having discovered unbridgeable dis-
agreements over ... Ireland and the
Labour Party.
The WSL was in many respects the
most serious of the split-offs from the
"far-left" Big Three (SWP, IMG and
WRP). The harsh contradiction be-
tween its claims to Trotskyist orthodoxy
and its economist practice clearly
labeled the WSL as a group heading for
an explosion. And it was initially open
to political discussion with other
avowed anti-Pabloists. Its October 1975
document, "Fourth International-
Problems and Tasks," sought to re-
evaluate the history of the post-war
Trotskyist movement and to serve as a
basis for discussions with other ten-
dencies, "especially those expelled from
the IC" (published in the "Trotskyism
Today" supplements to Socialist Press
Nos. 21-23).
The iSt responded to this invitation
with a letter (dated 17 June 1976)
pointing to the WSL's softness toward
social democracy and focusing on our
analysis of the formation of the de-
formed workers states (particularly the
methodologically key case of Cuba), as
well as reviewing our relations with
Healy's Ie. The letter also attacked the
workerist view that the degeneration of
the IC or any tendency could simply be
ascribed to its petty-bourgeois composi-
tion. Although this was the only reply to
the WSL's offer of discussions, the iSt
letter was not circulated even to the NC
for over a year.
However, the aggressive propaganda
work of the LSG made it impossible to
simply seal off the WSL against Sparta-
cism. The first fruit of these efforts was
an amendment from the Liverpool
branch to the international resolution at
the WSL's first annual conference in
December \976. Although flawed by i t ~
attachment to WSL workerisin and
hence hostile to the iSt's regroupment
perspective, it nonetheless demanded
recognition of the principled approach
to the Cuban Revolution taken by the
Revolutionary Tendency in the Ameri-
can SWP. This was clearly counter-
posed to the Thornett leadership's
position that there had existed only two
views on Cuba: the Pabloists' enthusing
for Castro and Healy's myopic denial
that a revolution had taken place at all.
The leadership urged the conference
delegates to reject the amendment, not
because it was wrong (in fact they
claimed to agree with it), but to prevent
the resolution from turning into a book.
But when the membership voted to
include this amendment, the only
successful motion against the platform
during the proceedings. Thornett and
his lieutenants simply buried it, so that
the resolution as amended never saw the
light of day. Although this issue had no
immediate consequence, it was indica-
tive of the WSL leaders' frenzied
reaction to anything smacking of
Spartacism.
Labour Review, had begun to elaborate
the struggle against Pabloist liquida-
tionism which the American SWP had
grievously neglected after the 1953 split
in the Fourth International and which
it was abandoning altogether by capitu-
lating to the popularity of Castroism.
The SLL's 1960 document, "World
Prospects for Socialism," moreover,
was seen by the Revolutionary Tenden-
cy (RT-forerunner of the SL/U.S.) of
the SWP as an articulation of its own
anti-Pabloist views. The RT and later
the Spartacist group sought to make
common cause with Healy, but were
blocked by the little despot's insistence
on squelching the slightest dissent (as
Thornett was to discover years later).
Following our bureaucratic expulsion
at the 1966 London conference of the
IC, Britain remained sealed off to the
Spartacist tendency for some time.
Beginning in 1975 the London Spar-
tacist Group set out to systematically
probe and polemicise with the myriad of
groups and grouplets which populate
the asteroid belt to the left of the centrist
Pabloist IMG and the left-reformist
"state capitalist" I.S./SWP. The LSG's
fight for political clarity and authentic
Leninism frequently upset the cosy
chuminess of the British Trotskyoid left.
Many were shocked to hear a group
which refused to succumb to the charms
of the left Labourite "club," to embrace
the green nationalism of the IRA or to
go along with the charade of phony
"mass work" which are common de-
nominators in the intensely parochial
and workerist "far left."
There were plenty of evidences of
cnsis in the left-of-the-Communist
Party "family." The I.S. had been
declining visibly from the time of the
general election in February 1974 and
suffered a haemorrhaging of cadre in
1975. The WRP had gone off the rails
altogether, spending most of its efforts
in slandering Joe Hansen (of the
American SWP) and more recently in
praising Libya's fanatical Muslim dicta-
tor Qaddafi. The IMG could never
decide how many factions it had,
oscillating up towards five, nor whether
it would be super-Mandelite or a bridge
to the Hansenites.
Among the smaller groups the RCG
was on the road to becoming a cult,
which is currently tailing after the
geriatric Moscov.-Ioyal Stalinists. Sean
Matgamna's Workers Fight (ejected
from the Cliffites in 1971) had just
joined with the Workers Power group (a
'1975 vintage I.S. expulsion) to form the
International-Communist League
(I-CL), while covering up differences on
Alan
Thornett
against this reformist single-issuism
and attracted by Thornett's credentials
as a workers leader, roughly a third of
the RCG left to join the WSL in 1975.
Even Alan Thornett, whose political
horizons do not generally extend far
beyond the shop floor at Cowley,
recognised the importance of the re-
cruitment of this layer of cadres, which
enabled the WSL to establish branches
in Birmingham and Coventry in the
West Midlands and in Liverpool.
Speaking at a WSL Midlands Aggre-
gate meeting in 1976 Thornett accurate-
ly termed this recruitment "the biggest
gain the WSL has ever made:" This
would seem to fly in the face of
Thornett's denigration of any orienta-
tion toward other left groups, except
that the WSL leadership did almost
nothing to achieve this regroupment.
... the London Spartacist Group
In late 1975 the iSt established in
London a small group of experienced
cadres, thus fulfilling a long-held aspira-
tion to begin systematic work in Britain.
In addition to its intrinsic strategic
importance, the presence of Healy's
SLL/WRP makes Britain one of the
centres of ostensibly orthodox Trotsky-
ist groupings. In the late 1950's and early
1960's the SLL's theoretical journal,
The Trotskyist Faction, wntlng three
years later, confirms this diagnosis:
"The WSL's break from Healyite
maximal ism was, in the final analysis, a
break towards economism and mini-
malism" (lNDORP).
While still inside the WRP,
Thornett's opposition (centred in Ox-
ford) had linked up with another
dissident clot in London at whose head
stood Alan Clinton. Clinton was note-
worthy for his rightist grumblings at the
WRP's decision to stand candidates
against Labour during the 1974 general
elections, while Thornett was more
interested in resurrecting the transition-
al demand of workers control of
production. The politically heterogene-
ous lash-up between Clinton and Thor-
nett was an early expression of indiffer-
ence to programme which in the WSL
was later to harden into purposeful
confusionism.
The combination of the glamour of an
influential, although localised, industri-
al fraction and its claim to defend
orthodox Trotskyism attracted to the
WSL in its early period a series of
leftward moving groups. The most
importal1t source for these regroup-
ments came from former members of
Tony Cliff's International Socialists
(IS-now Socialist Workers Party
[SWP]) who were breaking from the
I.S.' social-democratic workerism in the
direction of Trotskyism. The majority
of these elements-out of which was to
crystalise the core of the later Trotskyist
Faction-passed briefly through the
Revolutionary Communist Group
(RCG).
The RCG at its formation in mid-
1974 had also declaimed loudly on the
importance of programme. The initial
components of this group originated in
the Revolutionary Opposition, expelIed
from the I.S. in 1973, and had seen at
first hand the consequences of a mind-
less worship of spontaneity which
produced an organisation whose net
caught everything and held nothing.
They were joined in the first months of
1975 by nine members of the hetero-
geneous Left Opposition (also formerly
of the I.S.), which had split in four
directions in December 1974. Iconoclas-
tically dismissing alI past struggles to
construct the Fourth International, the
RCG under its guru David Yaffe was
principally an academic debating socie-
ty organised as study groups to write a
new programme.
Lacking a shared programme yet
requiring a minimum of common
activity, the RCG was easy prey for a
trio of supporters of the American SWP
who elaborated a regimen of single-issue
campaigns on women, on Ireland,
solidarity work with Chile and subse-
quently South Africa. In reaction
The Formation of the Trotskyist
Faction
Around the time of the WSL 1977
summer school. some of the emerging
oppositionists began to realise that
fidelity to Trotskyism required a full-
scale programmatic combat against
Thornett's workerism. In a letter dated
Concerning the question of voting for
popular front candidates the document
states forcefully that this is no tactical or
technical matter. This question is today
the dividing line between those who give
"critical" support to the popular front,
seeking to rlace it in power. and the
Bolshevik policy of proletarian opposi-
tion to coalitionism. But this is far from
a passive or abstentionist position. The
authors of the document wrote:
" We call lor the 1Il1lons nationallv to
withdraw union spnosorship fronl all
\1l's who support the coalition".,
"We must develop a fight in local
Labour Part\ constituencies for the
remova I of sitting 1\1 I's and the selection
of candidates who stand on a rC\olu-
tionary programme opposed to the
coalition, ... In bye-elections at present
we can give no support to LP candidates
who defend the coalition and will have
to consider critically supporting in some
cases centrist or revisionist candidates it'
they make opposition to the coalition
and wage control central to their
platform."
-- "The Coalition. 'Make the
Lefts Fight' and the Workers
Government Slogan"
Whereas in the past the WSL had not
taken a clear position on the question of
voting for popular front candidates, its
capitulation to social democracy was
clearly expressed in the standing de-
mand to "make the lefts fight," the alpha
and omega of Thornett's policy toward
the Labour Party. This policy came
under sharp attack in the oppositionists'
document:
"The present unity of Heffer. Benn.
Foot. Healey. and Callaghan in jointly
defending the coalition reveals the
essenrial programmatic agreement be-
tween the 'left' and right. ...
".. ,we should in no way create a false
distinction between them and their
right-wing bed fellows when the 'lefts'
are in no way distinguishing themselves
from the right wing by their actions....
To place demands exclusively on the
'lefts' when they are unified with the
right wing in opposing the struggles in
the working class devel.oping on the two
decisive issues of wage control and the
coalition, means that the WSL argues
that the 'lefts' do fundamentally differ
from the right-wing. When the 'lefts'
have made no break from the right, not
even verbally allied themselves with the
wages struggles. the demand that they
'kick out' Healey. Callaghan et al acts in
practice to strengthen illusions both in
the 'lefts' as an alternative leadership
and in reformism.
"This present orientation of the
movement. summe9 up in the slogan
'Make the Lefts Fight', elevates the
tactic of the united front and critical
support into a strategic orientation.
"The League places these demands on
the lefts because it makes its starting
point a preconceived desire to secure
unity with the left against the right. and
from an ahistorical perspective that the
task is to take the working class through
a fresh stage of reformist betrayal."
[emphasis in original]

would even consider voting for the
workers parties of a popular front.
At the NC meeting spokesmen for the
opposing Murray for
voting for workers parties in a popular
front and Mark Hyde and Jim Short
directed to submit docu-
ments defending their respective posi-
tions, Without waiting for the resolu-
tion of the debate, however. Socialist
Press went into print on 17 August
declaring that it would continue to call
for votes to Labour until such time as
there were actually joint Lib-Lab slates.
And as the faction fight developed, for
the first time drawing hard lines on
programmatic questions in the WSL,
Thornetl, Lister & Co. became far more
cautious in toying aroung with positions
which had been branded "Spartacisl."
In the course of the discussions over
the question of voting for candidates of
a popular front. some individuals
switched positions and the battle lines
began to be drawn. A document. "The
Coalition, 'Make the Lefts Fight' and
the Workers' Government Slogan"
([WSL] Pre-Conference Discussion
Bulletin No.2, January 1978), was
written during late autumn by Green,
Holford, Kellett, Murray. Quigley and
Short which called for a position of "no
vote for the candidates of workers"
parties (like the Labour Party) which
are in a Popular Front combination"
(Thesis 2 of the conclusion). On the
question of the slogan of a workers
government the document took the
position of Trotsky, who spelt this out in
discussions with leaders of the then-
revolutionary American SWP: " ... the
dictatorship of the proletariat, that is
the only possible form of a workers' and
farmers' government." Thus point 7 of
the conclusion states:
"The WSL advances the slogan of 'a
workers' government' as a pseudonym
for the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Its essential content-a government
that rules in the interests of the working
class and bases itself. not on the
bourgeois state, but on the independent
organisations of the working class--
remains. whether or not it is advocated
as a or an agitational
slogan,
Workers Government and "Make
the Lefts Fight"
The LSG leaflet also attacked the
WS L's justification for its adaptation to
shop-floor militancy: "For a small
grouping, like the WSL, to decide to
'shake off propagandism' in order to
proceed directly to 'conquering the
masses' is profoundly anti-Leninist. A
revolutionary organisation only ac-
quires the ability to lead whole sections
of the proletariat as it assembles a cadre
trained through hard principled struggle
for communist politics" ("CDLM:
WSL's 'Short Cut' to Nowhere").
The Green-Kellett-Piercey document
touched on the WSL's policy of shun-
ning polemical combat with centrist
groups, although the criticism was
largely empirical and put in the mildest
terms: "We also showed political weak-
ness in not taking up the 1MG adequate-
ly at the conference.... their argument
that toe CDLM shouldn't (politically)
counterpose itself to the Stalinists'
'diversionary' initiatives was part of
their left cover for Stalinism. The
difference between us and the Pabloites
was not that they had differences of
where and how to fight for pro-
gramme... ; but they are not prepared to
fight at all for programme." Neither, it
turned out. was the Thornett leadership.
which responded:
"We are told bv the comrades that we
did not take up' the IMG adequately at
the conference. That we should have
made a clear statement on their role as a
left covcr for the Stalinists. Such a
course of action would have been a
disaster. It would havc been certain to
drive the IMG out of the CDLM."
"Reply to 'The WSL and the
GO\ernmental Crisis· ... bv Alan
Thornell. [WSL] IflIern'al
BulleTin :\0, 21
Socialist Press
Founding conference of the WSL-Ied Campaign for Democracy In the Labour
Movement.
The French municipal elections and
Irish general elections. which both took
place in the spring of 1977. renewed the
debate inside the WSL on the question
of popular frontism. in particular on the
question of votes to the workers parties
of a popular front. At the WSL's
summer school in July this issue was
debated both at the session on Ireland
and at the 1'IIationai Committee meeting.
It was indicative of the scant importance
given to such "abstract" subjects prior to
this time that even Socialist Press editor
John Lister. backed by Alan Thornett,
could consider it a rightist notion that
any self-proclaimed revolutionary
social democracy" ("CDLM: WSL's
'Short Cut' to Nowhere," 27 March
1977). A parallel criticism was raised in
the Green-Kellett-Piercey document:
"Our failure to make the question of
programme and government central
was not confined to the pages of
Socialist Press. It was evident at the
CDLM recall conference....
"Although a special resolution was
passed by the conference on the Lib-
Lab coalition. the vital political ques-
tion facing the conference on govern-
ment was relegated almost to a side
issue, discussed separately from the
wages struggle and the fight for leader-
ship in the trade unions......
(COf1{ inued fro111 paRe 5)
for "a policy of conditional non-support
to Labour in upcoming elections unless
and until they repudiate coalitionism"
("Break the Liberal/Labour Coalition
in Britain." WV No. 152, g April 1977).
But even though Callaghan & Co. had
suppressed even the organisational
independence of the Labour Party by
openly tying it to the bourgeois
Liberals- with, moreover, the acquies-
cence of every single "left" M P [member
of parliament] from Tony Benn and
Michael Foot on Workers
Socialist League simply concluded that
the "lefts" "should have demanded and
themselves set up a new leadership
based on socialist policies" (Socialist
Press. 25 March 1977).
Within the Workers Socialist League
there was dissatisfaction with the
persistently apolitical character of the
WSL's trade-union work. A first docu-
ment. "The WSL and the Governmental
Crisis" ([WSL] Imernal Bulletin No. 19,
25 May 1977), submitted by Green.
Kellett and Piercey, attempted to pro-
grammatically generalise the objections:
"Although the toolroom strike
objectively challenged the Social Con-
tract and posed the removal of the anti-
working class Labour Government. the
consciousness of the leadership thrown
up in the struggle, the subjective factor,
did not correspond to those objective
tasks.... Although the WSL alone
recognised that the toolroom strike
precipitated a major governmental
crisis, Socialist Press failed to make the
question of government a central
programmatic issue during the strike."
At this time Green-Kellett-Piercey had
not decisively broken from the WSL's
accommodation to Labourism. and
were searching to render the perennial
Thornett slogan, "Make the Lefts
Fight," revolutionary. They called on
the WSL to "place demands on the lefts
to support the [tool room] strike against
the Social Contract and remove the
right wing [ofthe parliamentary Labour
Party]."
The Campaign for Democracy in the
Labour Movement, founded in 1976,
was an uninspired imitation of the
WRP/SLL's All Trades Union Alli-
ance. In practice it turned out to be
nothing but a forum for tedious re-
counting of shop-floor struggles. As it
became clear that the rank and file
would not flock to the CDLM simply
because it put "democracy" in its name,
it soon turned into an arena for mutual
accommodation between the WSL and
other left groups (specifically the I MG
and I-CL). Most importantly, the
platform of this pan-union propaganda
Alan Thornett's campaign
for president of the Transport and
General Workers not seek
to break the mass of British workers
from their Labourite traditions and
conscIOusness.
The CDLM program comes down to
opposition to wage controls and spend-
ing cuts and calls for more democracy
in the unions. !t even limits the call for
nationalisation to those firms threat-
ened with bankruptcy or large-scale
redundancies. It does not contain any
demand for the expropriation of all
capitalist industry, thus placing the
CDLM to the right of the maximum
programme of the Labour Party on this
question. There is no mention of
opposition to the presence of the British
imperialist army in Northern Ireland or
to the Labour "lefts'" chauvinist call for
import controls. much less of the
need for a revolutionary workers
government.
Describing the reformist CDLM. an
LSG leaflet' noted that it embodied the
central weakness of the British left:
"... glolil'ication of spontaneous 'rank
and file' trade union militancy
and ... political capitulation to British
The Rebirth of
British
Trotskyism...
6
WORKERS VANGUARD
7
Brian Hamill
Commando mans IRA roadblock.
question-of crucial importance for any
organisation with prett:ntions of provid-
ing revolutionary leadership to the
workers of the British Isles. In order to
plug this rather embarrassing gap in its
the leadership established
an Irish Commission which was charged
with developing a position for the WSL
In the course of the political struggle
within the WSL three members of this
four-man commission came to agree-
ment on a class-struggle programme for
Ireland paralleling the unique position
of the iSt. This was presented as the
Trotskyist Faction document "No
CapitUlation to Nationalism: For a
Proletarian Perspective in Ireland!"
([WSL] Pre-Conference Discussion
Bulletin No. 13, February 1978).
In recoiling from the anti-sectarian,
proletarian position of the Spartacist
tendency, the WSL wholeheartedly
embraced the kind of pseudo-socialist
"RepUblican" position on Ireland com-
mon to most of the British fake-
Trotskyist groupings. The Thornett
leadership's document attempted to step
around the difficult problem posed by
the existence of the separate Protestant
people (who comprise 60 percent of the
population of the six counties of
Northern Ireland and a quarter of the
population of the island as a whole) by
simply ignoring it and putting forward a
call for "self-determination for the Irish
people as a whole."
The TF document pointed out that
such a call "is meaningless precisely
because there is no sense in which we can
speak of the [Irish] people as a whole,"
and challenged the vicarious green
nationalists of the WSL leadership to
"face up to the implications of such a
programme. It is in effect a call for the
forcible unification of the whole island
by the Irish bourgeoisie irrespective of
the wishes of the Protestant communi-
ty," a move which "could only precipi-
tate a bloody communal conflict offer-
ing nothing for the proletariat." The
majority document clearly confirmed
the WSL's alignment with mainstream
petty-bourgeois Irish Republicanism:
"We do not argue as such for a united
capitalist Ireland. But it must be clear
that were such an unlikely development
brought about in the course of struggle
it would represent an historically
progressive development. " [emphasis in
original]
. - "Outlines of a Programme for
Ireland," ihid.
The Trotskyist Faction document
rejected the leadership's open support to
Catholic Irish nationalism, stating that:
"We are AGAINST THE FORCED
UNIFICATION OF IRELAND
UNDER BOURGEOIS RULE." In-
stead it raised the algebraic call for an
Irish workers republic as part of a
continued on page 10
INDORP as "lower-than-reformist
wretches who stand in the tradition of
one Albert Weisbord against Cannon
and Trotsky") and the Pabloist Greek
Communist International League (CI L),
which last year was engaged in "unity"
manoeuvres with the local USec section.
However, the WSL is not content
with such small fry and is quietly
stalking the big game of "the world
Trotskyist movement." With his reputa-
tion and history. Thornett reasons, he
should be able to reach an accommoda-
tion with Mandel & Co. or someone in
the big time. Currently the WSL is
entertaining leading representatives of
the French Organisation Communiste
Internationaliste (OCl). (Thornett's
documents inside the WRP contain
sections which closely parallel the OCI
conception of a strategic united front.)
While the WS L is not attracted by the
total liquidation into the Labour Party
of the Blick-Jenkins (British pro-OCI)
group-since this would eliminate the
independent cheerleading squad to hail
Thornett's work at Cowley-their natu-
ral resting place in the ostensibly
Trotskyist milieu would most likely be
as part of an ex-IC conglomeration
within the USec, centring on the
American SWP. Confirmation of appe-
tites in this direction can be seen in the
Socialist Press (8 March) article on the
recent French legislative elections,
which replicates the OCI position of
calling for votes to the Communist and
Socialist Parties (part of the popular
front Union of the Left) not only on the
decisive second round of voting but on
the first round as well.
A contribution to the pre-conference
discussion by the WSL leadership
purported to offer its orientation to "the
world Trotskyist movement." The
document, entitled "The Poisoned
Well" [WSL] Pre-Conference Discus-
sion Bulletin No. I, January 1978),
presents a version of the degeneration of
the Fourth International heavily fla-
voured by the WSL's workerist perspec-
tive. But the key, as the TF pointed out.
is that:
"The entire thrust of the document 'The
Poisoned Well' despite the promised
amendments is to attempt to straighten
out what the leadership sees as 'method-
ological' weaknesses of the thoroughly
reformist American SWP soas to better
equip it for the fight against the centrist
ex-International Majority Tendency
wing [of the USec]. If agreement can be
reached on the uncontentious theses at
the end of the document then the
'reunification' (sic) discussions can
begin. The EC [Executive Committee]
of the WSL is taking the organisation
down the road to liquidation into the
United Secretariat." [emphasis in
original]
Defence of the
Revolutionary Programme
At the February conference the WSL
central leadership tried to claim that the
most egregiously capitulationist refer-
ences to the SWP and the USec were
"slips of the pen," and submitted
amend ments to sanitise their document.
Alan Holford of the TF dismissed this
by pointing out that four single-spaced
pages of amendments hardly constitut-
ed "slips." In the debate Socialist Press
editor Lister said that while he was not
opposed in principle to characterising
the USec as centrist, to say so in writing
would preclude an invitation to the USec
congress, thereby rendering the
WSL's prospects "very small." Some
prospects!
The WSL's attitude towards the
Pabloist United Secretariat was accu-
rately captured by Holford in a quote
from Tristram Shandy which he included
in his presentation as minority reporter:
"Courtship consists in a number of quiet
attentions, not so pointed as to alarm
nor so vague as not to be understood."
One of the consequences of the
blinkered Cowley-centred economism
of the Thornett leadership was that for
the first three years of its existence the
WSL has not had a position on the Irish
A Class Line ys. Left
Republicanism on Ireland
As the document on "The Coalition,
'Make the Lefts Fight' and the Workers
Government Slogan" went through
successive drafts over two months, the
discussions within what had been an
amorphous left wing of the WSL
showed a growing political differentia-
tion. By the time the jointly written
document was submitted it was appar-
ent that the signatories were on the verge
of a parting of political paths. The
majority (represented by Green, Hol-
ford, Quigley and Short) were coming to
the conception that. while it was
conceivable that much of the WSL
membership and even a section of the
leadership could possibly be won to the
revolutionary programme, this could
only be done through the process of
insurrecting against the WSL's
Healyite-derived practice and
which had to be destroyed.
Murray and Kellett, however, pulled
back sharply and went on to playa
dishonourable role as a left cover for the
WSL leadership, sharing many of the
programmatic positions of the Trotsky-
ist Faction but subordinating these to
their desire not to break with Thornett.
This political differentiation was ex-
tremely important because it ruptured
the personal ties between the ex-
I.S, I RCGers, establishing unambi-
guously that programme comes first.
Within a short period after this break
with the Murray clot the TF had
produced its comprehensive political
statement, "In Defense of the Revolu-
tionary Programme."
INDORP provided for the first time
what the WSL had lacked from the
beginning, a coherent Trotskyist pro-
gramme and perspective. It took up
many of the questions raised by the iSt
letter of June 1976 (Cuba, history of the
Ie, trade-union policy, "make the lefts
fight") and other key issues facing a
revolutionary vanguard in Britain,
notably the Irish question (see more
below). It also drew a sharply critical
balance sheet of the WSL's incompetent
and opportunist international work:
"Unable to build an anti-revisionist,
democratic centralist international
tendency on the basis of a clear
programmatic attitude to the basic
tasks of revolutionaries in this epoch
and the decisive issues of the class
struggle internationally (opposition to
popular frontism, defence of the de-
formed workers' states, political
struggle against nationalism and the
necessity to re-create the Fourth Inter-
national), the central leadership has led
the WSL into a world of rotten blocs,
cover-ups, diplomacy and intrigue-
masquerading as the fight to 'recon-
struct' the Fourth InternationaL"
In the WSL, "international work" is
mainly an extra-curricular activity, and
at least some of its international
connections have been made without
directives by the NC by one comrade
who uses his holidays to make political
contacts outside this tight little island.
Mostly the WSL should just be embar-
rassed by its international "co-
thinkers," the contemptible Socialist
League (Democratic-Centralist)
[SL(DC)] of the U.S. (referred to in
13 July 1977, Green wrote to Holford:
"I have been re-reading some of the
Spartacist's material over the last
couple of days, including some of their
basic documents (declaration of princi-
ples, intervention at the 66 IC confer-
ence), their letter to the OCI and their
letter to the [Spanish1 LCE, and the
founding document of their French
section, the Ligue Trotskyste de France.
What has struck me is the absolute
consistenC\ with which they have
fought lor'their positions since the early
1960's, and through the period subse-
ljuent to their foundation they have
been able to build in a real way both in
American and inrernationalli· on the
basis of democratic centralism.
"Politically they seem to me to represent
the onl\ revolutionary current in
existence. Thev have u'nderstood the
revisions of Pa'bloism and the comple-
mentary errors of the IC in a verv
complete way, have analysed and
fought all the petty bourgeois radical-
ism that has been prevalent since the
late 60's (feminism, New Leftism,
guerillaism) and in a complementary
fashion have stood out against the
capitulation of the so-called Trotskyists
of the USFI (both wings) to Popular
Frontism and to the widespread eco-
nomism that has afflicted the left since
the working class began to break out
into struggle in a big way over the last
decade. This political independence and
consistency has been reflected in a very
precise and conscious understanding of
the tasks that face small groups of
revolutionaries in the present condi-
tions, summed up in their formulation
of the fighting propaganda group. The
value of their positions has been
apparent again and again in facing the
problems that actually confront the
WSL (syndicalist approach, obscuring
of the need for a new revolutionary
party opposed to the Labour Party,
misuse of resources, neglect of the left
groups and the lack of a consistent
political line which is clearly before the
membership as it carries out its work,
question of inner party democracy and
leadership). I have come to the conclu-
sion that their approach to the Labour
Party has the virtue of at least according
with the real situation in the working
class, and the fact that the Labour Party
is losing support very rapidly-they see
work directed at the LP as having the
purpose of splitting and winning ad-
vanced workers through grappling with
the turns in the objective situation and
the manoeuvres of the reformists, while
maintaining clearly the necessity for a
Trotskyist party infront of the working
class. On the trade unions their idea of
the trade union caucus seems to provide
the possibility of a genuine growth and
the serious training of a new leadership
without liquidation or opportunism,
which the CDLM to me represents.
Again on Ireland they have seriously
confronted the problems presented by
the particular form which the national
question takes (not a new position
incidentally, and indicative of their
ability to confront major theoretical
questions concretely and in relation to
the world political situation).
"I saw... at Grunwicks on Monday,
They asked me if I had any questions on
their politics or things I couldn't
understand. I was in the uncomfortable
position of having to say that I could
quite see the logic of their positions....
This was the only formulation that I
could come up with to actually forestall
a discussion over points which I agreed
with any way. That made me realise that
I have a responsibility to face up to their
existence and my essential agreement
with them. From now on I intend to
fight for their politics inside the WSL."
Economist
"Left" Labour members of parliament Tony Benn (left) and Michael Foot
complained about coalition with Liberals, then backed Callaghan.
7 APRIL 1978
NYC Transit Pact
WV Photo
local 1537 steelworkers rally outside latrobe Steel Company plant.
For a Pittsburgh-Area USWA Shutdown
WV Photo
300-600 pm
4 30·800
2 00-5 30 p rrl
3rd -"=:-,or
NEW YORK
Tuesda,
Saturda.
523 50'_)"
Cc'cag
P'lone .....
CHICAGO
Fllday and Saturday
1634 Telegrapr 3rd floor
I near 17th Street)
Oakland. Ca' 'c,·nla
Phone 835·"
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Marxist Literature
BAY AREA
with the city even before the TWU
contract expiration date, to undercut
the ramifications of a transit strike on
the subsequent city negotiations and
ensure a "reasonable, uniform settle-
ment for all transit and city workers"
(i.e.. no workers should get anything!)
Nonetheless. both the New York
Times and the New York Post report
widespread unhappiness with the pro-
posed contract, and both speculate
about the possibility of the ranks voting
it down. But a "no" vote on this
particular contract is not enough to
ensure that the workers will win. Guinan
& Co. have proven that they will not
fight for the TWU membership. but the
powerful transit workers can bring the
city to its knees. TWU ranks must vote
down this rotten "gi\'eback" contract,
stand firmly on their principle of "no
contract. no work" and strike to win!.
municipal workers whose contracts
expire on June 30. While the bourgeoi-
sie has clearly seen the necessity of
salvaging New York. it is determined to
make sure that the gross defeat inflicted
on city workers in 1975 sticks. The
prospect of a paralyzing transit strike
forced Koch and Governor Carey to
grant miniscule increases to the transit
workers. But despite the fact that the
TWU is recognized as the "pattern
setter" for other municipal unions, the
city is determined to give the other
unions one hell of a lot less. Koch aides
frankly admit: "We'll do a lesser deal
with the other unions because th_y don't
have the leverage that transit does."
Labor fakers Gotbaum and Shanker
will no doubt cooperate by trying to
shove whatever pathetic offers the city
makes down the throats of their mem-
bers. Thus. Gotbaum in open collusion
with Koch for the past month was
attempting to conclude negotiations
that an agreement had been reached-
the terms of which they refused to reveal
to the public. But the bourgeoisie rested
easy that night in the knowledge that yet
another devastating blow had been dealt
the NYC labor movement.
What is in this contract that Koch
describes as a "reasonable settlement"
and Guinan calls a "damned good
contract'"! Precisely those "givebacks"
that Koch demanded and that theTWU
leadership claims to have resisted. The
contract provides for a 6 percent
increase over the last 21 months of the
contract. with no increase at all until
July I. A $250 lump sum payment is to
"compensate" the transit workers for an
Ig percent loss in buying power over the
last four years! There is also the
"principle" of a cost-of-living
escalator which, however, was tied to
productivity and which "contains no
money" until mid-1979!
Finally, in order to undermine the
union and avoid paying full union wages
and benefits. the MTA wins the right in
this sellout agreement to hire 200 part-
time employees, something that the
union has long opposed. This stinking
gi\eaway contract was aptly summed up
by bus driver Bruce Wright: "They
picked our pockets." E\en the Transit
Authority bargainers, who have been
through many such negotiations, had to
admit that Koch had really put "the
union's feet to the fire." But the transit
workers themsehes rna\ \ et han: the
tina I \\ ord a hout who wi nds up \\ it h hot
fect.
:\aturally, the hosses' press ap-
plauded the sellout agreement. \\ hill'
claiming that the city cannot afford to
offer the same settlement to the union
coalitIOn representing more than 200.000
As the 12:01 a.m. Saturday strike
deadline passed while contract negotia-
t ions for 33,000 transit workers contin-
ued. what could have been the most
explosi\e labor struggle in New York
City in many years turned into a familiar
late-night re-run. Making a mockery of
the "no contract. no work" slogan.
which is synonymous in many minds
with the Transport Workers Union
(TWU), the TWU Local 100 bureau-
crats "stopped the clock" a half hour
before the deadline so that the negotia-
tions with the Metropolitan Transit
Authority (MTA) could drag on. The
streets of the city. normally crowded
with Friday night partyers and movie-
goers. were already deserted as New
Yorkers awaited news of the strike.
At 4 a.m. Matthew Guinan, TWU
International president and Mayor Ed
Koch emerged from their suites atop the
plush New York Hilton surrounded by a
gaggle of clubhouse cronies to announce
TWU President Guinan (left) speaking at strike rally March 26.
"They Picked Our
Pockets!"
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strike fund. After these angry outbursts
an embarrassed McBride left speak-
ers' platform. promising to "consider"
the situation.
Latrobe workers must place no
confidence in the treacherous McBride
bureaucracy. which has hamstrung steel'
workers with the "no strike" ENA
(Experimental Negotiating Agreement)
pact. Moreover. after shoving the
sellout 1977 contract down the throats
of workers in Big Steel. the USWA tops
simply left the hundreds of smaller basic
steel industry feeder plants and specialty
shops to negotiate on thelr own.
Workers in basic steel must not allow
the Latrobe strikers to be isolated and
beaten down, One-day solidarity shut-
downs of key steel plants in the
Pittsburgh region would quickly bring
Latrobe to its knees! Victory to the
Latrobe strikers!.
LATROBE. Pennsylvania-Two to
three thousand Pittsburgh-area trade
unionists rallied here March 19 in
support of United Steelworkers of
America (USWA) Local 1537 which has
been on strike for the past nine months.
The USWA struck Latrobe Steel last
August I and has been out ever since
demanding the basic steel package.
Historically Local 1531's contracts have
had the same terms as the steel giants.
However. in 1975 Latrobe was bought
out by the Timkin Company; when the
contract expired last fall the company
declared all previous agreements and
arbitration decisions with the Local
nullified. Thus Latrobe workers are
fighting to retain many hard-won
contractual gains including seniority
rights. vacations. pensions. incentives.
grievance procedures and many other
clauses.
Workers at Latrobe represent only
one section of the several-thousand-
strong USWA workforce at the many
small fabricating and specialty steel
plants in the Pittsburgh area which have
been forced out on strike since last fall.
While many of these small companies
supply the basic steel industry, this year
management has been trying to break
the tradition by which the basic steel
pact is accepted as the pattern for the
local negotiations. Thus, in addition to
Latrobe, several thousand USWA
members have been on strike since
October I against Pullman Standard,
demanding Pullman include the basic
steel "task grievance" agreement in its
contract. And USWA Local 7174 at
Mesta Machine struck for over five
months, finally backing the company
down in mid-March and winning a 25
cents-per-hour increase above the basic
steel pact.
Among those participating at the
March 19 rally were members of the
UAW, Teamsters, ILGWU. IBEW and
other area trade unionists. Speaking
before the crowd USWA International
president Lloyd McBride was confront-
ed by furious strikers who demanded
urgently needed strike support funds
from the International.lnparticularthe
stnkers noted that while the bureaucra-
cy had finally contributed $1 million to
the striking Mine Workers, it was in
effect starving out the Latrobe workers
with miserly strike benefits while sitting
on $100 million in the union's massive
"No-Strike" McBride
Strands Six-Month
Strike at Latrobe Steel
8 WORKERS VANGUARD
The Moro
Kidnapping...
(continued/rom page 1)
DC's "opening toward the left"- the
coalition with the Socialists (PSI) in the
1960's -and was the main protagonist
within the DC of bringing the Commu-
nists into the parliamentary majority
during the recent cabinet crisis.
The BR has supplied a popular
martyr for what may well become one of
the more reactionary popular fronts in
history. if the PCI has its way. Follow-
ing the kidnapping. a "state of peril" was
proclaimed in Rome. under a
Mussolini-era law according to which
anyone may be arrested without consti-
tutional guarantees "if necessary to
reestablish or preserve public order"
(L'Espresso, 26 March). In line with
demands by PCI and Socialist senators,
the army was called in to conduct the
investigation. And the "anti-terrorist"
decree issued by Prime Minister Andre-
otti two days after the Moro kidnapping
includes mandatory life sentences for
kidnappings where a death results.
legalized wiretapping. detention with-
out a warrant and interrogation without
an attorney present.
The PCI has lent enthusiastic support
to these repressive measures. In open
solidarity with the police. they mourned
the death of Moro's carabinieri body-
guards killed in the assault: a wall poster
signed by the PCI. Socialists and other
major parties proclaims "Moro Abduct-
ed, Five Comrades Slain." As part of
their active drive to organize a police
union. they demand reinforcement of
the "anti-terrorist" intelligence force of
the secret police-the future Italian
Pinochets.
Not content to limit their treachery to
calls for repression of the Red Brigades,
they demand similar measures against
their far left opponents in the aurono-
mia operaia (workers autonomy):
"Certain components of the workers
autonomy constitute the logistical base,
the point of support for the clandestine
groups.... These nuclei must be hunted
down, the chains of solidarity broken,"
declared Communist deputy Ugo Pec-
chioli. the PCI's "shadow minister" of
the interior (quoted in Corrierre della
Sera. 18 March).
The inevitable consequence of such
measures---moves toward a bonapartist
"strong state"-will be bourgeois terror
aimed at the left and workers move-
ment. This is already occurring. One of
the "suspects" arrested ·as a supposed
BR sympathizer was Francesco Berardi.
an ideologist. of the "autonomos"
and Giuseppi Zambon (former leader of
the tenants union in Milano). And on
Friday a Milano judge found seven
workers of the Magneti Marelliand Falk
factories, who were arrested last April
while target shooting, guilty of subver-
sive activity and participation in' an
armed gang. The judge held that the
"autonomos" were simply a mass cover
for the Red Brigades (RepubblicQ, .1
April).
Despite its loyal support for capitalist
rule. the PCI will not be spared the
bloody suppression it demands .for
others on the left. It was the head of the
SID (Italy's FBI) General Micelli, who
was the key link in the 1970 fascist-
military coup plot. Yet it is precisely the
secret police which the PCI has singled
out for strengthening (and of course
"reorganizing" by introducmg a few
"democratic" officials). What folly!
They should recall the fatc of the
German social democrats. who relied on
the Pruss ian police to protect them from
the fascists. Hiding the real lessons of
the Chilean carnage-the PCI con-
cluded it was necessary to tie the
workers to an even larger sector of the
bourgeoisie through the super-popular
front of the "historic compromise" with
the DC--the Italian Communists are
laying the groundwork for brutal
repression of the working class at the
7 APRIL 1978
hands of "democratic" butchers.
The turn toward terrorism as a
political weapon is in large part a
reaction to the Pet's complete aban-
donment of even a pretense of class-
struggle politics. The PCI, which kept
the minority Christian Democrat gov-
ernment in power over the last months
by abstaining on key issues in parlia-
ment. now actively backs the new DC
government in exchange for a format
role in shaping legislation. The popular
front has now been formally constitut-
ed: the PCI has passed from the
antechamber of the "historic compro-
mise" to the reception hall. In return the
PCI is expected to deliver the unions for
the austerity program which the PCI
itself supports: cuts in pensions, holding
down wages. reducing imports, higher
taxes.
The Italian bourgeoisie has been
unable to deal with one of the worst
unemployment rates in the industrial-
ized West, particularlyamong the youth.
A combative working class has wrested
significant concessions, managing to
keep pace with the soaring cost of liying.
In the political vacuum left by the
reformists' open betrayals, terrorismand
political nihilism has flourished among
the semi-Iumpenized young proletarians
and students.
Red Brigades: New Left
Maoist Anarcho-Terrorism
The bourgeois and PCI press is filled
with speculation about sinister rightist
forces and foreign spy agencies mixed
\lp in the Moro kidnapping. Some argue
that the precision of the abduction was
definitely German, reminiscent of last
fall's Schleyer kidnapping by the Red
Army Faction (RAF-the so-called
"Baader-Meinhof gang"). Right-wingers
accuse the KGB, while Communist
leaders see the hand of the CIA and
recall Washington's attempt to "destabi-
lize" Chile at the time of Allende's 1970
election (by assassinating the head of the
army). The PSI tops, however, are
convinced it's the Czechs;
These "hypotheses"-whether ad-
vanced by the PCI Dr by the "far left"
(including the French LCR's Rouge of
21 March)-are simply an excuse tojoin
in or capit1llate to the bourgeois "anti-
terrorist" outcry. The action was clearly
timed to coincide with the opening of
the much-postponed Red Brigades trial
in Torino. (Renato Curcio, the 33-year-
old BR leader, and 14 of his comrades
are imprisoned while a number of others
have escaped or have never been caught
and are being tried in absentia on
charges of committing 30 kidnappings
and 55 robberies. In addition the 49
defendants were accused of "forming an
armed organization with the intent of
overthrowing Italy's political, economic
and social institutions.") As for the
politics of the Red Brigades, they are
clearly of New Left origins, expressed in
a sociologese reminiscent of C. Wright
Mills, infused with despair of the
working class:
"They know there will be no imminent
mass uprising in Italy, no storming of
the Bastille, so they have chosen urban
guerrilla warfare as a means to promote
revolution."
-BR-lawyer di Giovanni, quoted
in New York Times, 30 March
The Red "Brigades' first actions were
closely tied to northern Italian factories
where there has been a history of sharp
clashes between a hated management
and the rebellious workforce. Thus from
1969 to 1978 at the SIT-Siemens factory
in Milano there have been four manag-
ers kidnapped, two armed actions, 18
automobiles of management personnel
destroyed. four shootings and a colossal
fire. Other factories where there have
been fires and kidnappings claimed by
the BR include Alfa Romeo (Milano)
and Magneti Marelli (Genova). The
Brigades have also executed several
'ultra-rightist and fascist thugs.
Following the detention of a number
of BR leaders the level of violence
escalated. Arrested in September 1974,
Curcio was freed from prison in Febru-
ary 1975 by a commando headed by his
wife. then re-arrested the next June. A
year later the attorney general of
Genova was assassinated by the Red
Brigades. In February 1978 the Roman
magistrate in charge of prisons for
political detainees was shot down, and
five days before the Moro kidnapping
the Torino police inspector formerly in
charge of intelligence and secret police
was killed by the BR.
The targets of the Red Brigades have
been the property, leading personnel
and armed guards of the bourgeoisie.
Although they call for international
coordination among the "Fighting
Communist Organizations," presuma-
bly including the likes of the German
RAF. the BR have not been visibly tied
with nationalist terrorists such as the
Palestinian PFLP, nor have they taken
credit for criminal acts of indiscriminate
terror (such as the hijacking of a
Lufthansa airliner in connection with
the RAF's Schleyer kidnapping).
The Communist Party, however,
seeks to lump the autonomos, anarchist-
Maoist terrorists and the nihilistic
"metropolitan Indians" together with
the fascists as "criminals" and "enemies
of the democratic state." Aside from the
PCI's slanderous equation ofleftists with
ultra-reactionaries and its inveterate
obscuring of the class line (between the
violence of groups linked to the workers
movement and the violence of the
bourgeoisie), there are fundamental
distinctions between anti-PCI New
Leftism and nihilistic rage.
Both the Red Brigades and the diverse
organizations and groupings loosely
associated as "workers autonomy" can
rightly be considered the products of the
"class of '69." Born of a hatred of the
slick class-collaboration of the PCI,
which frustrated the mass upsurge of the
"hot autumn" of 1969, these groups
represent the evolution of New Leftism
in the absence of a renewed working-
class rebellion. The BR, who trace their
origins to the sociology department of
the University of Trento and the
radicalil.ed Catholic youth movement,
turned to terrorist attacks on represen-
tatives of the bourgeoisie out of frustra-
tion at the seemingly unshakable Stalin-
ist stranglehold on the Italian working
class.
Similarly, the auronomia operaia
groups grew out of the inability to
consolidate a revolutionary opposition
to the PCI in the trade unions, thus
producing anti-trade-union workerism
and a penchant for adventurist street
confrontations with the police. The
"metropolitan Indians," on the other
hand, represent the total decomposition
of the New Left into violent anti-
working-class lumpen rage. The failure
of any of the "far left" groups to oppose
the PCI's popular frontism allowed
these potentially dangerous anti-
political nihilists access to masses of
students and Italy's hundreds of thou-
sands of perennially unemployed youth.
A year ago we commented on the
ominous potential of this decomposed
New Leftism:
"With their anti-union impulses. petty-
bourgeois rage and glorification of
lumpenism the "Metropolitan Indians"
quite conceivably could spawn signifi-
cant recruits for the fascists, even
though at present a blood line separates
-them."
-"Student Strikes Rock Italy,"
Young Spartacus No. 53, April
1977
"Far Left" Grovels
The most notable effect of the BR's
actions has been stabilizing and unifying
the government and providing it with
the pretext for vicious repression of
the left. Under the pressure of bourgeois
hysteria, most of the "far left", has
buckled under. Some have equivocated,
like Lotta Continua, coming out
"... against fear, against the blackmail
of the Red Brigades and that of the
State." Unable to take sides between the
capitalist state and the unpopular
terrorists, they denounced both:
"We totally condemn the means, the
objectives and the political conception
of the 'brigatisti" which is based on
terror. But we refuse to build, on this
state. the social basis for an increasingly
repressive regime."
-quoted in Le Monde, 22 March
Appropriately, they called for an ex-
change of Moro for BR leader Curcio.
The Italian section of the "United
Secretariat of the Fourth Internation-
al," Livio Maitan's Gruppi Communisti
Rivoluzionari (GCR), was, if anything,
even worse. parroting the PCI's accusa-
tions against the BR and solidarizing
with the "anti-terrorism" campaign in a
revolting display of political cowardice:
"Whether the Red Brigades were direct
participants. or if on the contrary they
only provided a political cover for an
action taken by others, this does not
affect their political condemnation,
which must now be total. ...
'The kidnapping of Aldo Moro and its
political exploitation, which unequivo-
cally bear the stamp of the right, make
necessary a powerful workers
mobilization."
-Rouge. 20 March
The GCR, which for years recruited on
the basis of unadulterated Guevarism;
which uncritically applauded the spec-
tacular 1974 assassination of Franco
premier Carrero Blanco; which mind-
lessly cheered on acts of indefensible
terror against innocent civilians by Irish
and Palestinian nationalists; now un-
veils its true political appetites. Enthu-
siastic advocates of terror elsewhere,
when it occurs closer to home they rush
headlong into the arms of their "own"
bourgeoisie as soon as the predictable
"anti-terrorist" demagogy begins.
In contrast to the GCR's hypocritical
capitulation,'some leftists in Italy took a
principled and courageous stance. The
Gruppo Bolscevico-Leninista of Um-
bria, which broke from the GCR in
opposition to voting for reformist
workers parties in a popular front-not
to be confused with the GBL d'Italia,
which supports voting for the working-
class components of such a bourgeois
political formation-forthrightly de-
fended the BR against the bourgeois
state (in a leaflet dated 16 March), while
correctly pointing out the futility of
individual terror:
"The actions of the BR not only serve as
a pretext for the state to launch attacks
on the left. but also promote a further
dispersal of the proletariat and its
vanguard. Instead of spurring the
workers onto the road ofclass struggle,
these actions condemn them to passivity
and observation from afar.
"But at this time we do not turn our
backs on the terrorist militants in an
accusatory and criminal manner. Hon-
est revolu'tionaries must not flee (as do
continued on page 10
Ontario Cops
Rampage...
(continuedfrom page 12)
legal and financial assistance and a
pressure campaign to force the Big
Three auto companies not to handle
scab goods. But when Essex brought a
$600,000 lawsuit against the UAW in
December, the International capitulated
completely, rushing in to impose sub-
stantially the same terms the strikers
had been offered before they walked out
the previous spring. And after the strike
was broken only 50 of the 200 strikers
were hired back at the plant, with the
rest to trickle back "as needed." .
The UAW bigshots care little about
the horrible conditons which prevail in
hundreds of small parts supplier plants.
UAW militants must not allow the
Fleck strike to be abandoned or
strangled, as the Essex walkout was.
With continued militant support from
other UAW locals, the Fleck workers
can win far more than the pittance that
the union is presently asking for. The
bosses have decided to turn the Fleck
strike into a test of strength with
organized labor in southern Ontario.
The UAW must use its tremendous
industrial muscle to win this strike and
to make Fleck a spearhead in a drive to
bring the thousands of other unorgan-
ized workers in small auto parts shops
into the union at full Big Three rates.
Victory to the Fleck Strike!.
9
Labor Skates Witchhunt Militants at
British Leyland
DefendAlon Thornelll
The Moro
Kidnapping...
(continued from page 9)
the cowards of the Italian left) from the
obligation to defend ALL the left
against the state and its bestial re-
pression. We openly and forcefully
affirm that the demand of freedom for
the victims of white terror is an irrevo-
cable component of our communist
program."
Bourgeois justice in Italy does not
pretend to be neutral. General Miceli
got off scot-free for his role in the 1970
"Rosa dei Venti" conspiracy in league
with "black prince" Valerio Borghese.
The fascist murderer who gunned down
a Lotta Continua militant last Septem-
ber escaped punishment, while the slain
leftist's comrades were sentenced to one-
and-a-half years in prison. Red Brigade
member Massino Maraschi was sen-
tenced to 30 years-he was held "moral-
ly responsible" for a shootout with
police which occurred while he was in
jail! Furthermore, the BR leaders' lives
are in danger every moment they remain
in the bourgeoisie's jails. Free the
imprisoned BR leaders!
The capitalist class has used the rise in
left-wing figures to launch the current
anti-terrorist hysteria. For years the
escalating terrorism of the fascist MSI
met with only routine police round-ups
which rarely even came to trial-there
are still an estimated 300 right-wing
thugs under arrest. Since 1976, however,
groups such as the BR have tried to
single-handedly even the score with the
marauding fascist scum. Despairing of
any mobilization of the proletariat, the
Italian anarcho-terrorists stepped up
their attacks-sacking 122 Christian
Democratic party offices in the first ten
months of last year alone.
Leninists have always opposed
individual terrorism. From the time of
the Russian Marxists' polemic against
the Narodniks, who sought to bring
down tsarism by bombing the tsars, to
the present where authentic Trotskyists
opposed Guevarist guerrillaism, our
method has always been the class
struggle, reliance on the working masses.
When much of the left was hailing the
random, indiscriminate terror practiced
by nationalists such as the Palestinian
PFLP, who specialize in airport massa-
cres and hijacking innocent passengers,
we denounced it as criminal and indefen-
sible. But where terrorist acts have been
directed against the class enemy-out of
hatred for capitalism-the Spartacist
League has never flinched from defend-
ing those militants from the organized
terror of the capitalist state. As Trotsky
wrote:
"If we nevertheless reject terrorist acts,
it is not because we do not recognize the
right to revenge. but instead because
individual revenge is insufficient. The
bill we have to settle with the capitalist
world order is too large to present to a
vulgar government official with the title
of minister. To understand all the
crimes against mankind and all the
disgraces to human dignity as the
products of a social system, in order to
bring together all our force in collective
struggle against this system-that is the
path whereby the most flaming desire
for revenge can find its highest moral
satisfaction."
The attraction of futile and substitu-
tionist terror for dedicated young
militants in Italy is only possible in the
absence of a revolutionary party cap-
able of mobilizing the working masses
toward a seizure of state power and
establishment of proletarian rule-the
only alternative to the social rot of
Italy's decaying capitalism.•
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10
LONDON-In an unprecedented move
which. if successful, would constitute a
major defeat for car workers in Britain,
officials of the Transport and General
Workers Union (T&GWU) in Oxford
have recommended that Alan Thornett
(leader of the centrist Workers Socialist
League- WSL) and eight other union
militants at the Cowley plant of British
Leyland automobiles be expelled from
membership in the union for "bringing
the union into disrepute." The local
labour skates have also carefully in-
cluded in their lineup two noted right
wingers, Reg Parsons and Cy Blake, in a
transparent attempt to give the witch-
hunt against the left the appearance of
impartiality,
"Bringing the union into disrepute" is
the standard catch-all charge used
universally to pillory trade-union mili-
tants. In fact. this attack on the left is
being made at this time because the
company and its union henchmen are
afraid of opposition to the layoff and
speed-up scheme recently announced by
Michael Edwardes, chief executive of
the state-owned British Leyland auto-
mobile enterprise. The "Edwardes Plan"
calls for "a gradual reduction in the
number of workers required to efoduce
a given number of vehicles." It is
estimated that this will mean in practise
plant closings and the elimination of
12,500 jobs in 1978 and thousands more
in 1979 and 1980.
The recommendations for discipli-
nary action arose out of an "enquiry"
held by the T&GWU's Oxford District
Finances and General Purposes Com-
mittee last November. The enquiry was
..~ ~ .
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nothing short of a kangaroo court. The
hand-picked Regional and District
bureaucrats who laid the charges also
conducted the hearings and recom-
mended the final sentences! The final
decisions have not yet been announced.
It is clear that management and its
labour lieutenants are determined to
oust Thornett and the amorphous left
wing which constitutes the major
opposition at the key Cowley plant to
Leyland's "rationalisation" scheme.
With some 100,000 cars in stock,
management feels confident that it will
be able to withstand any strike waged in
Thornett's defense. (Leyland may have
less to worry about from Thornett than
it imagines. Although the workers in his
branch expressed strong sentiment for a
one-day strike in support of the victi-
mised militants, Thornett, capitulating
to the wishes of left bureaucrat Bobby
Fryer, called it off. This cowardly action
was criticised even in the press of the
WSL.)
Alan Thornett has been a: shop
steward in the Cowley plant for the past
16 years. He is also chairman of the
T&GWU 5; 293 Branch. In May 1974
Leyland management withdrew nego-
tiating facilities from him and refused to
recognise him as an elected trade-union
representative, and after a massive red-
scare campaign in the bourgeois press
the leadership of the T&GWU held fresh
elections in which Thornett lost his post
as derJilty convenor. But last December
he was reelected in a shop-floor ballot-
and still management refused to recog-
nise him. yet the union tops did nothing
to secure his recognition! We demand
that the T&GWU drop all charges
against Thornett and the other stew-
ards, halt the disciplinary hearings and
immediately mobilise the full weight of
the union to defeat management's
attempts to decide who shall or shall not
represent the Cowley workforce.
The defence of the Cowley stewards
depends on the ability of the victimised
militants to mobilise the ranks in their
support. In situations such as this,
where obvious violations of elementary
democratic procedures are occurring,
there is pressure to fight the union's
bureaucratism through the bourgeois
courts. In fact, Frank Corti. one of the
nine militants and Secretary of the
T&GWU 5/293, has already at-
tempted-unsuccessfully-to force can-
cellation of the disciplinary hearings by
means of a High Court injunction on the
grounds that such hearings would be
"biased" and "unfair." Taking the union
into the capitalist courts is asking the
class enemy to meddle in the affairs of
the workers movement-and even to
arbitrate intra-union disputes! The
bourgeois state will not protect union
democracy but simply further subordi-
nate the labour movement to the ruling
class. All class-conscious militants must
reject such treacherous "tactics."
While sharply disagreeing with the
minimal trade unionism passed off by
Thornett as the programme of revolu-
tionary Trotskyism, the Spartacist
League (British section of the interna-
tional Spartacist tendency) recognises
that should Leyland management or its
local labour cronies succeed in driving
Thornett out of the T&GWU and
consequently out of Cowley, this would
constitute an important defeat for
British workers. Class-struggle militants
must support the Cowley workers
against this management-backed
offensive.
Drop the charges! Halt the discipli-
nary hearings! No reliance on the
courts! The T&GWU must force Ley-
land to recognise Thornett now!.
The Rebirth of
British
Trotskyism...
(continuedfrom page 7)
socialist federation of the British Isles.
The TF stated clearly that the struggle to
unite the Protestant and Catholic
working people across sectarian lines
must be premised on inflexible opposi-
tion to the continuing oppression of the
Catholic minority in Northern Ireland,
and also on a fight for the immediate
and unconditional withdrawal of British
troops from Ireland. However, the TF
document added:
..... the removal of the troops, unless a
class-conscious proletariat led by a
revolutionary party is able to intervene,
may well be the occasion for enormous
sectarian slaughter (as occurred in India
after independence) but as Marxists we
must reject out of hand the reformist
proposition that imperialist troops can
ever be a fundamental guarantee
against barbarism. The continuation of
British imperialism's military occupa-
tion of the north is even more inimical
to the prospect for socialism than the
.slaughter which might follow its
departure."
~ " F o r a Proletarian Perspective
in Ireland!"
In the debate on Ireland' at the
conference one Thornett supporter after
another rose to speak in defence of the
majority's sketchy but clearly Catholic
nationalist document, yet felt it neces-
sary to preface their remarks by admit-
ting they knew little about Ireland. In
contrast, the position of the Trotskyist
Faction, drawing on the considerable
collective experience of its members in
the struggle in Ireland, was presented by
Paul Lannigan, a former member of the
Irish National Committee of Healy's
SLL from 1968 to 1970. Lannigan, who
had first-hand experience in recruiting
Protestant shop stewards in Derry to the
SLL, opposed the leadership's "social-
ist" green nationalism, which effectively
denies the possibility of revolutionaries
being able to win Protestant workers to
an anti-sectarian, socialist programme.
Mass Work Fakery, Menshevism
and Bundism in Turkey
With the exception of its loose ties to
the Greek CI L and the American
SL(DC), the WSL's only work outside
Britain has taken place in Turkey.
Beginning with a few Turkish members
recruited from the WRP, the WSL
recruited a handful of raw militants and
established two small branches in
Turkey. In every respect the Turkish
work was a criminal fiasco as a
minuscule grouping of politically uned-
ucated militants attempted to translate
the WSL's "mass work" approach from
chummy England into the harsh reality
of Turkish society where labour and
leftist militants are regularly set upon
and often murdered by fascist thugs.
The Trotskyist Faction recruited two
members of the WSL's Turkish group in
London who recounted the bitter
experience of a strike (for union
recognition) sparked by the Turkish
WSLers: "We were totally ill-prepared
to give even good trade union leadership
to back up our advice to these workers"
("Enough of Opportunism, Adventur-
Spartacus Youth League Forum
How They Could Have Won
The Great Miners Strike
of 1978
Speaker:
MARK LANCE
Workers Vanguard correspondent in West
Virginia and Kentucky
Tuesday, April 11 at 7:30 p,m.
Student Union, Room 216
University of Connecticut/Storrs
STORRS
For more info call (617) 492-3928
WORKERS VANGUARD
ism, Bundism: For a Trotskyist Perspec-
tive in Turkey," [WSL] Pre-Conference
Discussion Bulletin No. 12, February
1978). The WSL leadership wasn't taken
aback. True, the majority document
admitted, " ... thestrikewasisolated, was
broken, and all the strikers were
sacked." However, "Though the battle
was lost. our comrades were developed
and new contacts won" ([WSL] Pre-
Discussion Bulletin No.6,
February 1978)!
Having experienced the dead end·
posed by the WS L's economist activism,
these two militants came to fundamen-
tal agreement with the Trotskyist
Faction's insistence on the centrality of
programmatic clarity and the struggle to
educate and recruit cadre 'as key to
building the revolutionary party. Thus
the TF Turkish document attacked the
leadership's Bundist approach to the
national question as applied to the
Kurds (a national minority presently
divided among Turkey, Iraq, Iran,
Syria and the USSR). According to the
WSL majority the Kurds must achieve
"national unity first," i.e., the establish-
ment of a bourgeois Kurdistan; conse-
Kurdish workers living in
Turkey must be organised into a
separate Kurdish party. Recognising the
Kurds' right to self-determination, the
TF document attacked this Bundist
organisational norm and Menshevik
two-stage strategy.
On the thorny Cyprus question the
faction took a clear internationalist
position:
"Up until 1974. the Turkish population
of Cyprus was nationally oppressed by
the Greek population-since the inva-
sion by the Turkish army, the Greeks
have been in the more oppressed
position. Because the two populations
have been thoroughly intermingled on
this small island it is clear that the
reality Qf 'self-determination' for either
people can only come at the expense of
the other and thus 'self-determination'
is not applicable. We call therefore for
the withdrawal of all foreign troops
(whether Turk, Greek, UN, l\ATO, or
any other) and for the unity of Greek
and Turkish working peoples of Cyprus
to overthrow capitalism and establish a
workers state under the leadership of a
Trotskyist party."
-"Enough of Opportunism,
Adventurism. Bundism... "
Thornett "Counterattacks"
For the longest time the Thornett
leadership sought to ignore the interna-
tional Spartacist tendency. After a
year's procrastination, the WSL's some-
time .resident literary dilettante, Alan
Westoby, finally produced a draft reply
to the June 1976 iSt letter. This work
was so blatantly unserious that the WSL
NC rejected it in summer 1977. Since
Westoby had left the organisation to
pursue his "theoretical" activity, the job
of drafting a new reply was commis-
sioned out to someone else-whose
work was rejected for being too soft on
the iSt. Finally leadership loyalists like
John Lister and Tony Richardson
produced their own reply-with a little
help from their friends in the Murray
clique. This shoddy document laconi-
cally remarks in the introduction: "In
compiling this material we have drawn
on notes supplied by cdes. Steve Murray
and Julia Kellett, though neither com-
rade has seen the completed document."
(Having rejected the Trotskyist
Faction's comprehensive political cri-
tique of the hardened right-centrist
Thornett leadership, the Murray group
slid into ignominious disarray at the
national conference, with faction mem-
bers splitting their votes and one even
voting for a TF document. With a
chronology reminiscent of the career of
the vile Tim ["I was a hatchet man for
Healy and Hansen"] Wohlforth, Mur-
LE BOLCHEVIK
organe de la Ligue Trotskyste de France
12 F les 6 numeras
pour louIe commande:
Le Bolchevlk, B.P. 421 09
75424 Paris CEDEX 09, France
7 APRIL 1978
ray's fence-straddling and unprincipled
bloc with Thornett earned him only the
political contempt of some of his own
factional partners [and no doubt of the
Thornett supporters as well].)
The Lister-Richardson-Murray "re-
ply" is a broken record stuck on the
single refrain thaf"the iSt is "sectarian"
because we recognise that "a currently
embryonic party organisation must
necessarily constitute itself in the form
of a 'fighting propaganda group'" and
we frankly state that the character of our
trade-union work must be "exemplary,"
rejecting the workerist notion of inter-
vening in every daily struggle of the
masses. "What type of forces will such a
stand attract'?" the Thornett group asks
rhetorically, answering: "Talkers, de-
baters, and those disillusioned with
struggle for leadership within work-
ers' organisations... " ([WSL] Pre-
Conference Discussion Bulletin No.5,
February 1978). At another point they
wax indignant: "Your refusal to fight to
recrUit workers ... means that your role
is reduced to that of political vultures,
preying on other tendencies on the left."
This absurd charge-reminiscent of
Wohlforth at his nadir, when sputtering
for lack of anything to say he would
charge that Spartacists "hate the
workers"-is consummate dishonesty
coming from authors who are not
unfamiliar with Workers Vanguard. But
at least the Thornett supporters make
clear what it is they object to: the
authors complain that the London
Spartacist Group interventions in WSL
public meetings "seem determined to cut
across any dialogue with [workers who
attend these meetings] and drive them
away from the WSL, turning every
meeting into a debate on the most
abstract level."
And just what are these "abstract"
topics of debate? The same points that
were the axis of the TF faction fight: the
need to break from Labourism and
illusions in the Labour "lefts"; the need
for a proletarian strategy in Ireland, to
draw the class line against popular
frontism. This is too "abstract" for the
Thornett group because they seek to
recruit politically raw workers at their
present level of consciousness, i.e.,
militant trade unionism. We, however,
aspire to recruit workers who despise
the I MG's line of M.enshevik "unity" or
the SWP's refusal to defend the gains of
the October RevolJtion.
The authors of the leadership "reply"
to the iSt get carried away with their
self-righteous rhetoric about how the
Spartacists would be repelled by the
"action of thousands and millions of
workers mobilised in practical struggles
around its [the Transitional Pro-
gramme's] demands." We are anxiously
waiting to hear how the WSL has
managed to mobilise these "thousands
and millions of workers" around even its
reformist minimum program for the
unions. In fact, at the conference
Thornett admitted that the WSL had
been unable to play much of a role in the
firemen's strike because the much larger
Cliffite SWP stood in the way. What the
WSL did not do in this situation is
polemicise against the SWP. As for
trade-union implantation, the WSL has
no significant fraction outside Cowley.
This compares the SLjU.S. which
gives political support to active groups
of class-struggle unionists among dock
workers and warehousemen, steel work-
ers, car workers, phone workers and
seamen.
The one issue which seems to have
stung the WSL central leadership into
something resembling a political de-
fence is the question of voting for
popular front candidates and the nature
of a workers government. John Lister's
document, "What the Fourth Congress
of the Comintern Really Decided"
([WSL] Pre-Conference Discussion
Bulletin No.3, February 1978), is really
just an attempt to institutionalise the
confusion sown by Zinoviev and Radek
in that discussion. If the WSL really
wants to say that it considers a Labour
Party cabinet resting on a majority in
Parliament to be a "workers gov-
ernment"-this is one of Zinoviev's
five variants--they are free to do so. We
would only remind them of the com-
pany they are travelling in. One Pierre
Frank, in a commemorative article on
the Transitional Programme (Interna-
tional RMlt"t' It' , May-June
1967). congratulated the Pabloist Unit-
ed Secretariat in having "revived and
enriched" the concept of workers
government to mean something other
than the dictatorship of the proletariat.
As for the Spartacist tendency, it stands
on the "unrevised" programme of
Trotsky's Fourth International, which
states:
"This formula. 'workers' and farmers'
government', first appeared in the
agitation of the Bolsheviks in 1917 and
was definitely accepted after the Octo-
ber Revolution. In the final instance it
represented nothing more than the
popular designation for the already
established dictatorship of the
proletariat .. ".
"When the Comintern of the epigones
tried to revive the formula buried by
history of the 'democratic dictatorship
of the proletariat and peasantry', it gave
to the formula of the 'workers' and
peasants' government' a completely
different. purely 'democratic', i.e.,
bourgeois content. counterposing it to
the dictatorship of the proletariat. The
Bolshevik-Leninists resolutely rejected
the slogan of the 'workers' and peasants'
government' in the bourgeois-
democratic version."
- The Death Agony of
Capitalism and the Tasks ofthe
Fourth International
A slightly more serious attempt to
deal with the question was made by
Clinton, Hyde and White (a trio whose
opening shots in the political struggle in
the WSL were their arguments that the
police deserved a "sliding scale of
wages"). Their document ("Strategy and
Tactics-A Reply to Our Petty Bour-
geois Critics," [WSL] Pre-Conference
Discussion Bulletin No. 10, February
1978) prints pages of citations to argue
that Trotsky in the 1930's did not take
an explicit position against voting for
the workers parties in a popular front.
What these scholastic "theoreticians"
ignore is that Trotsky faced situations in
France and Spain which were pre-
revolutionary, with parliamentary and
electoral tactics quite secondary in the
context of massive factory occupations
and direct military struggle with the
fascists. In France Trotsky urgently and
repeatedly called for the formation of
committees of action (in the context of a
strike wave) as the vehicle for breaking
the workers from the popular front and
splitting the reformist parties.
Our snide academics don't mention
this, nor does the WSL present any
programmatic axis for struggle against
the reformist parties and against bour-
geois coalitionism. On the contrary it
makes a ritual denunciation of the Lib-
Lab coalition ... and then promises to
vote for Labour anyway. If ever there
were a case of sterile propagandism, this
is it The French Pabloists were consis-
tent, at least, in refusing to characterise
the Union of the Left as a popular front;
should they do so, said the Mandelites,
"This would lead logically to abstention
in the [1977] municipal elections"
(quoted in International, Summer
1977).
The WSL's own policy-refusing to
vote for coalitionist candidates only if
joint Liberal-Labour slates are
presented-is a purely juridical concep-
tion of the bloc, which implicitly or
explicitly denies the essential fact: that
the popular front is a bourgeois political
formation. The left oppositionist docu-
ment on the workers government slogan
answered this subterfuge in advance
with a quotation from Trotsky:
"The question of questions at present is
the People's Front. The left centrists
seek to present this question as a tactical
or even as a technical manoeuvre so as
to be able to practice their little business
in the shadow of the People's Front. In
reality the People's Front is the main
question of proletarian class strategy
for this epoch. It offers the best criterion
for the difference between Bolshevism
and Menshevism...."
--"Letter to the RSAP," Writings
of Leon Trotsky, 1935-36
The heart of the Clinton-Hyde-White
document is unadulterated class baiting:
e.g., "They appeal to tired petty bour-
geois members who prefer academic
debate to the class struggle...." Etc.
What drives these three (who, by the
way, are themselves teachers) into a
frenzy is the Trotskyist Faction's rejec-
tion of the guilty workerism which
passes for politics in the WSL. Attempt-
ing to be condescending, they only
articulate their own philistinism. More-
over, when they finally get around to
justifying their all-purpose slogan
"make the lefts fight," their mystical
glorification of the "daily grind" spells
itself out in the language of frank
opportunism:
"Until such time as significant sections
of workers look to alternative revolu-
tionarv leaders. we must take the
worke-rs through the experience of
trying and testing the alternatives that
ex ist."
-"Strategy and Tactics... "
Just as revolutionaries begin with the
objective needs of the proletariat rather
than its present consciousness in formu-
lating their program, we do not "take"
the proletariat through the experience
of reformism. If they have not yet
broken from the Stalinist and social-
democratic misleaders we must indeed
accompany them through the experi-
ence of exposing these betrayers. But the
WSL does indeed mean to take British
workers through a new experience of
reformism-Jirst the Callaghans and
Healeys, then the Foots and Benns, and
then...
Results and Prospects
In describing the loss of 20 percent of
its active membership as "A Step
Forward" (Socialist Press, 22 Febru-
ary), the Workers Socialist League
declares its firm intent to continue in its
ostrich-like position. As a result of the
split by the Trotskyist Faction it has
been reduced to a national network of
supporters of Alan Thornetl's activities
at the Cowley Leyland plant (reverently
dubbed "The Factory" by the WSL
leadership). The loss of a sizeable
number of younger comrades has
clearly stung them, as has the departure
of a layer of experienced cadres; and the
haemorrhaging of the WSL has not
stopped yet.
For the international Spartacist
tendency, the fusion with the comrades
of the TF greatly increases the authority
of our Trotskyist programme, in Britain
and internationally. In Britain today
there is one-and only one-
organisation which intransigently fights
coalitionism, opposes all brands of
nationalism and is part of a democratic
centralist international tendency: the
Spartacist League.
One parting reply to the WSL's
embarrassingly empty class baiting: we
do not wish to begrudge Alan Thornett
his unstinting dedication to defending
the interests of the Cowley workers as he
perceives them. Under the proper
leadership of a disciplined Trotskyist
party such mass leaders can perform a
crucial role in preparing the working
class for revolutionary struggle. But
such a party will be far different from
the support apparatus for one or a
group of trade unionists (the most
degenerated example of the latter being
the Ceylonese "section" of the USee,
which is nothing more than an append-
age of a conservative white collar
union run by the corrupt BaIa Tampoe).
It must be a party whose Marxist
programme is formulated and tested
through the kind of political struggle
which the WSL has systematically
avoided, whether in the factories, in
mass demonstrations, public meetings
or the party itself.
Yes, the WSL conference was indeed
a step forward-for Trotskyism and the
international Spartacist tendency. It
was a savage blow,however, to the
pretensions of the parochial workerists
from the South Midlands of little
England.•
11
W'liIlEliS ,,1NfilJl1lilJ
Shut Down Fleck with Mass Pickets
Ontario Cops Rampage Against
UAW Strikers
Bill Ironside/London Free Press
Ontario cops grab UAW picket In front of Fleck plant at Huron Park.
l"ORONTO, March 3 I-Dressed in full
battle gear, 140 club-wielding provincial
police charged a picket line of 100
members of the United Auto Workers
(UAW) at the Fleck Manufacturing
Ltd. in Huron Park, (southwestern
Ontario) yesterday:Smashing their way
through the picketers and injuring
bystanders with their riot sticks, these
armed strikebreaking thugs moved in to
dismantle a barricade of cars set up by
union militants to block the entrance of
the struck plant.
Six people were arrested and dozens
injured during the cop assault. Directed
by helicopter, the Ontario Provincial
Police (OPP) onslaught imposed a
virtual state of seige in tiny Huron Park
as the cops blocked off all routes into
town to head off UAW members from
neighboring areas who were reportedly
on their way to the picket lines. All
traffic came to a standstill and schools in
the area were closed; one woman
reported it took her hours to convince
police at three successive roadblocks to
let her through the barriers and return to
her home.
For most of the day rampaging cops
terrorized workers and local residents
alike as they careened through the
industrial area rounding up strikers and
swinging their billy clubs at anything
that could move. Time and again
picketers were knocked to the ground by
the cops, pinned down, kicked and
beaten, then thrown bleeding into the
paddy wagons and carted away. One
London [Ontario] Free Press reporter
was smacked in the ribs with a three-
foot riot baton. And Jack Pawson, a
Toronto UAW organizer who witnessed
the scene, told the Free Press (31
March), "This looks more like Nazi
Germany than Canada. I'm speechless
at seeing this happen."
The 80 workers at Fleck, who
manufacture auto-wiring systems, have
been on strike since March 6, demand-
ing their first VAW contract. The
strikers, mainly women, face a manage-
ment committed to maintaining the
standards of a 19th-century sweatshop
in their factory. Fleck employees work
in unsafe, unsanitary conditions at well
below poverty-level wages. The base
rate at Fleck is a miserable $2.85 an hour
rising to $3.24 after ten years!
The union leadership's wage demand
in the strike (a starting wage of $3.20,
rising to $3.95 /hour over three years)
would still leave Fleck workers making
less than half the amount received by
most auto workers. In addition the
union is demanding a compulsory dues
check-off. But even these paltry de-
mands have been turned down by the
company which has offered its employ-
ees an insulting 10 cents an hour for each
year of the contract.
The Fleck workers have vigorously
resisted all attempts by the company,
cops and scabs to break their strike.
Enlisting the help of several hundred
12
fellow UAW members from locals
across southwestern Ontario, strikers
have repeatedly defended their picket
line against the cops who daily attempt
to shepherd a busload of scabs into the
plant. While the provincial police have
sent contingents of up to 200 armed
scab-herders to the picket line, mass
picketing has successfully shut down
production three times.
The strike has sharply polarized
Huron Park between a handful of scabs
and the strikers, their families and
supporters. The determination of ttw
UAW unionists has produced a steady
depletion in the ranks of the scabs. One
strikebreaker who decided to stop
crossing the picket lines told reporters:
"The tension was unbelievable. I was
really in fear of my life."
The company and their armed scab-
herders in blue are clearly determined to
try to bust the union. One of the more
. ominous developments in the strike
occurred when cops raided the offices of
the London Free Press (an area daily)
on March 15 seizing over 150 photo-
graphs to obtain material for the
prosecution of three militants arrested
after a car which injured two picketers
was overturned and "totaled" March 14.
Tocountersympathy forthe overwhelm-
ingly female strikers, the police have
employed some 40 women cops. How-
ever, for the most part the police have
relied on their riot clubs and jackboots
in their war against the heroic and
frequently outnumbered pickets.
McDermott's Militant
Grandstanding
The UAW's Canadian Director,
Dennis McDermott (heir-apparent to
the presidency of the Canadian Labour
Congress [CLC]), has seized upon the
Fleck strike as an opportunity to boost
his credentials as a "fighter." Playing up
the direct link between the Ontario
government and the company-which
was founded by Deputy Minister James
Fleck and is still half-owned by his wife
and daughter-McDermott thundered
against the strike-breaking role of the
provincial cops. McDermott told repor-
ters, "If Mister Kerr [Ontario solicitor
general] can't control the OPP and if he
doesn't do something to stop the abuse
of women on the picket line by the
police, the VAW will show him how to
do it" (Globe and Mail, March 10).
But as one Ford worker from Talbot-
ville remarked when asked about
McDermott's support for the strike:
"He's never been out himself." Another
strike supporter recalled how McDer-
mott denounced the "goon squad" of
Talbotville militants when they closed
down their plant a day before the
"official" beginning of the November
1976 Canadian Ford strike. "We're
living up to our reputation" in coming
out to support the Fleck strike, the
Talbotville militant told wv.
Picketers also reported that the
Oakville Ford plant, 20 miles outside of
Toronto, has continued using scab
wiring from the Fleck plant throughout
the strike. It is a telling indictment of the
McDermott leadership that it has not
only failed to mobilize rnough union
support to shut down Fleck, but also
allows UAW members to handle scab
products! Militants must demand that
McDermott and the UAW International
declare a complete ban on handling
wiring manufactured at Fleck for the
duration ofthe strike.
Shut Down Fleck With Mass
Pickets!
For the Fleck workers who are daily
battling the scabs and the cops, victory
depends on the solidarity of their union
brothers and sisters and mass mobiliza-
tions on the picket lines to shut the plant
down tight! UAW militants must
demand that bus loads of pickets be
,dispatched daily to Fleck. The company
has threatened to get a court injunction
to bar mass picketing, but as the striking
U.S. coal miners recently proved,
rriilitant trade-union solidarity can turn
any such injunction into a worthless
scrap of paper.
Fleck workers must beware of any
maneuvers by the UAW tops to aban-
don them or weaken the much-needed
solidarity pickets. Already the union
officials have eagerly accepted a propo-
sal by Tory provincial labor minister
Bette Stephenson to cool the strikers off
with a moratorium on cops, scabs and
picketing while a bogus government
advjsory board met to make recommen-
dations on ending the strike. Much to
the disappointment of the VAW brass
the Fleck bosses turned down the
government's proposal.
During the April 4 CLC convention
session, Bob White, slated to succeed
McDermott as UAW Canadian direc-
tor. announced that due to Ford's
refusal to stop using scab Fleck pro-
ducts at Oakville, he would shut down
that plant. But when asked just how and
when Oakville would be closed White
replied that the union would use an
"Apache" strategy and refused to say
anything more. Fleck workers must
place no faith in McDermott's and
White's bombast, remembering that
Solidarity House's "Apache" tactics in
1972 were a powerless series of short
mini-strikes aimed at allowing auto-
workers to blow off some steam while
avoiding a real confrontation with the
speed-up sweeping General Motors
assembly plants. These "Apache" fake-
strikes allowed bitter strikes at GM's
Norwood and Lordstown plants to drag
on isolated for months and end in
defeat.
The situation at Fleck vividly recalls
last year's tragic nine-month strike of
predominantly women auto workers at
Essex Incorporated in Elwood, Indiana.
Miserably underpaid, the women walked
out in April 1977 and for months they
fought against trigger-happy armed
guards, who shot and permanently
disabled one striker, and scab-herding
police. Solidarity House "promised"
continued on page 9
7 APRIL 1978

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